Revised eTime milestone schedule

Email from PM to Stakeholder group, 03-Sept-2012:  

The eTime Phase 2 Release 1 enhancements were released for UAT testing on Friday 24th August.  No testing feedback has yet been received.  Last week, progress continued on building the eTime Phase 2 Release 2 enhancements.  However, Release 2 will not be made available for UAT Testing until Release 1 has been signed off and published to Live. 

From today, we have 20 days left in the eTime project's budget for the remaining Build and UAT Support work by Mairi and Michael.  In order to make best use of the remaining budget days, we have decided to spread out our project bookings for Mairi and Michael.  This allows also us to accommodate a resource conflict on Michael's time, for some additional work on Infinite.  Liz has been made aware of this conflict, and has agreed in principle that the Infinite work should go ahead.  The revised eTime plan will allow an additional 4 weeks of elapsed time, for the business stakeholders to UAT test and sign-off the Phase 2 releases. 

The target schedule for Phase 2 is now:

 - Weds 5th Sept:            Business stakeholders complete all outstanding actions from previous project meetings

                                           (see https://new.projects.ed.ac.uk/project/fin072/actions)

 - Mon 17th Sept:              Business stakeholders complete Release 1 UAT testing

 - 17th Sept - 28th Sept:   Developers address testing feedback

                                          Business stakeholders re-test fixes

                                           (fixes will be released iteratively for re-testing)

 - Mon 1st Oct:                 Business stakeholders sign off Release 1

                                         Release 1 published to Live

 - Tues 2nd Oct:               Release 2 released for UAT testing

 - 2nd - 12th Oct:              Business stakeholders UAT test and submit testing feedback

                                          Developers address feedback

                                           (it is vital that feedback be provided iteratively throughout this period,

                                            so that developers can work steadily to address it)

 - Fri 12th Oct:                  Business stakeholders complete UAT testing of Release 2

 - 15th - 19th Oct:             Developers address testing feedback

                                          Business stakeholders re-test fixes

                                           (fixes will be released iteratively for re-testing)

 - 22nd - 26th Oct:            No development resources available

 - 29th - 31st Oct:             Contingency for addressing late re-testing feedback

 - Weds 31st Oct:             Business stakeholders sign off Release 2

                                          Release 2 published to Live

 - 1st - 16th Nov:               Post-deployment support

 - Fri 16th Nov:                  Deployment sign-off

To clarify the project's resourcing over the next period:

 - Mairi is on leave for the next 2 weeks. 

 - Mairi will then work for 5 weeks shared at 30% fte to the eTime project.  The freed up proportion of Mairi's time will be used by the University Website project. 

 - Michael will work for the next 3.5 weeks full-time on the Infinite project.

 - Michael will then work for 2.5 weeks shared equally between eTime and Infinite.

 - Michael will then work for 1 week full-time on eTime. 

This takes us to 19th Oct in the schedule above.  Mairi returns on 29th Oct at 30% for the final contingency week.  Mairi and Michael are then both available at 10% for the post-deployment support.

Current demand for IS development resource is extremely high.  It is therefore vital to the project that the outstanding stakeholder actions and the UAT testing are progressed steadily over the remaining weeks, while our development resources are still available.