Closure Report

Project Summary

The scope of this project was to upgrade the TEST and LIVE Perspective environments from v4.6 to v5.1.1. Perspective is a security incident tracking system supported by a Canadian company called Resolver.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 34 days

Staff Usage Actual: approximately 27.7 days

Staff Usage Variance: -18.5%

Other Resource Estimate: £0

Other Resource Actual: £0

Other Resource Variance: 0%

Outcome

The original project objectives and deliverables are shown in the table below. All of the success criteria were met. The project was delivered on time and under budget.

Estimations are shown within the Analysis of Resource Usage section.

Timings for the LIVE upgrade were noted as follows:-

• 2pm started upgrade by backing up database.
• 2.30 - 4:45pm Resolver remotely accessed server upgrading DB, Reports and application server.
• 4.45pm Estates notified to start UAT.
• 6:30pm update email sent to project team advising that UAT was ongoing.
• 8pm Development Technology assisted Estates with Dispatch testing.
• 8:45pm Complete UAT and Upgrade and system users advised they could now access the system.

Explanation for variance

The vendor Resolver were asked to perform the upgrade on our behalf by accessing the servers remotely. They agreed to do this free of charge as part of our existing maintenance contract. This meant the upgrades to TEST and LIVE progressed more smoothly as the supplier was able to address issues encountered immediately, saving IS and business staff time raising tickets and liaising with a helpdesk team based in Canada.

Additionally, project delivery has been more efficient because the majority of the team had previously supported the last Perspective upgrade so the maturity level of the team was high.

Key Learning Points

This project benefited enormously from implementing two key lessons learned from the last Perspective upgrade project, specifically items 1 & 2 below:-

1. Ensuring the system was regularly updated, ideally annually. Upgrading from v4.6 to v5.1.1 was a single upgrade and this avoided the issues encountered with project EST089. Maintaining annual upgrades should be continued.

2. To address the issues relating to the 7 hour time delay between the University and the Canadian supplier an alternative support arrangement was introduced. This was to request Resolver to perform the upgrade remotely, overseen by Development Technology, to both the TEST and LIVE environments. Resolver agreed to do this free of charge as part of our maintenance agreement. This proved to be a very positive and important decision and it is a strong recommendation this approach should be repeated for future upgrades. There were a number of issues encountered by the supplier upgrading the TEST system, which the University would not have been able to fix. Having Resolver remotely connected into our system meant they could address the problems there and then without the need for the University potentially raising multiple tickets with their Canadian based helpdesk.

A record of the issues encountered during the TEST upgrade can be found at https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/unpublished/project/est096/meetings/test-upgrade-snagging-list

• It should be noted for the next upgrade for Resolver to have access to a test account so they can sanity check the build before passing on for UAT.

3. Estates implemented previous lessons learned making sure staff would be available to undertake testing. To enable Estates to effectively perform testing and train their people an extra week was added to UAT. This allowed Estates to better optimise project tasks with business as usual working (often shift working). This worked well and should be repeated for future upgrades. The length of UAT should be set to allow this balance to be achieved in future, as a minimum 5 weeks but when setting the length of UAT consideration should also be given to the extent of changes to the Perspective system, which for v5.1.1 were small.

It should be noted that a copy of the test scripts is available at https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/unpublished/project/est096/meetings/perspective-upgrade-test-scripts

4. Most of the project team had been involved with the previous upgrade project and there was a good working relationship. Using people who had been involved previously allowed the team members to bring this experience to this upgrade.

5. During the upgrade of TEST it was highlighted that the reporting service was not working. This was functionality previously not used by Estates. The certificates for both TEST and LIVE were ordered and applied and if this is functionality is required then going forward these must be maintained.

6. In order for Resolver to perform the upgrade, out of hours working should be regarded as a pre-requisite.

Outstanding Issues

There are no outstanding issues.

During the upgrade it was noted that the reporting server is on SQL2008. At the Project Closure Meeting the Programme Manager took an action to investigate and propose options for how the version of SQL on the reporting server can be upgraded to a later version as part of the Estates service agreement with IS Apps.

Acknowledgements

The out of hours working performed by both A Campbell and A Webb is worthy of particular acknowledgement and commendation. Their late working ensured minimum disruption to the business during the upgrade - thank you again to both of you.