Details of upskilling request

This has now been incorporated in PICCL5 for information

6-Jan-14 Although asked for 148 days as the new project budget, WIS have agreed and DS clarified in their notes that the new project budget is 158 days.

Sent to David Berry and Mark Ritchie on 12/12/13

Please review my request for 13  days up skilling work for HRS075 HR & Payroll Annual Maintenance 13/14 Project

The approach to the Oracle HR & Payroll Annual Maintenance (Tax Year End) project has changed in the last few years. This is in part related to the fact that Applications Management were no longer able to commit the effort to lead on this patching each year so for 12/13 the work was moved from Apps Man to Config Team. For the 12/13 project Ana Heyn supported Greg Fleming through the process with additional effort needed for familiarisation and to allow Greg to shadow Ana on some tasks.

With the restructures in both Apps Man and Dev Services this has moved the little HR experience that we had in the division away from the Corporate team. This also required a review of whether the approach adopted in 12/13 fitted the new structure with the loss of the Config Team.  Through discussions with Bill and Iain it was agreed that the Software Development team should not be patching the TEST and LIVE environments as it had been agreed the Config Team would do. This therefore has needed a further change in approach for 13/14.

It has therefore been agreed that (1) Pam Smulski should be skilled up to share the knowledge for patching Oracle HR and (2) that during the DEV patching process that the developer should script the patches, where possible, and draft a deployment plan which should then allow someone in Dev Tech to undertake the required patching. Point 2 also requires additional effort for upskilling as Dev Tech would normally only undertake the security patches and the decision has been made to allocate this work to David McNicol as those with previous Oracle HR knowledge are committed to other work (Gillian Henderson is now on rotation in Tech Man and Gordon McKenna is resourced to other projects).

The benefit to this approach is that resources in both the CSG Dev and the Dev Tech teams will gain further knowledge on progressing this essential patching work. Further experience in Dev Tech of Oracle HR will also be beneficial ahead of migrating the database later this year and the other infrastructure projects that are currently in the 3 year plan. 

The additional effort required for Pam to cover familiarisation and to shadow Greg through both the prerequisite and tax year end patching process is 7 days. With the additional effort for David McNichol being 5 days (familiarisation and increased effort for patching an unfamiliar technology). This brings the net increase for "upskilling" to 13 days.  If you would like details of the upskilling allocation, I can provide this if required.

If you agree that there is benefit for the department and that the additional 13 days can be allocated to the project for staff upskilling a PICCL will be submitted to the next possible WIS meeting.

 Many  Thanks

 Anne

Details of upskilling: