Completion Report
Project Summary:
Objectives and Deliverables
| Objective 1 | To upgrade the ASTA Powerproject and Timesheet software to the most up to date versions available by end June 2016. | Achieved |
| Deliverable 1 | Upgraded ASTA Powerproject application (TEST & LIVE) | Delivered |
| Deliverable 2 | Upgraded ASTA Timesheet application (TEST & LIVE) | Delivered |
| Deliverable 3 | Updated User documentation (as required for new features) | Delivered |
| Objective 2 | To migrate the ASTA Powerproject database to the new database server by end June 2016. | Descoped following decision point in Objective 2, deliverable 1 (see below) |
| Deliverable 1 | Recommendation on whether existing infrastructure should be replaced from IS Applications Development and Production teams |
Delivered Discussions with Apps and the supplier recommended that there was no technology or support drivers to change existing infrastructure and therefore PICCL 3 agreed that Objective 2 and susequent deliverables be removed from the project. (https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/unpublished/project/inf116/milestones/infrastructure-decision and https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/unpublished/project/inf116/issues/3)
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The following deliverables will only be required if the recommendation is to change the existing technical architecture |
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| Deliverable 2 | New database infrastructure for TEST and LIVE | Descoped |
| Deliverable 3 | Migrated TEST database | Descoped |
| Deliverable 4 | Completed connectivity test to confirm no issues resulting from migrated database | Descoped |
| Deliverable 5 | Migrated LIVE database | Descoped |
| Deliverable 6 | Updated technical documentation for the ASTA service | Descoped |
Success Criteria and Benefits from the Brief
| Success Criteria |
Following the upgrade all existing functionality is maintained and operates successfully, all new features of the upgraded product also function correctly |
Acheived |
| Benefit | Remove bugs with the current version of ASTA Powerproject, in particular, the bug where project names only display on some views with a manual workaround. | Acheived |
| Benefit | Improve functionality including allowing skills to be made inactive. This will remove manual error where staff who move teams have multiple skills and currently frequently record time to incorrect skills and reduce the overhead for Admins to resolve the issue. | Yet to be rolled out by ASTA Admin but the functionality to do this and other functionality changes have been delivered. It is therefore expected that this benefit will be achieved. |
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 60 days
Staff Usage Actual: 28 days
Staff Usage Variance: 46%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Major Milestones
| Date at start of project or end of planning | Actual milestone date | |
| End of Planning | 10/03/16 (from project start request) | 27/04/16 |
| Deployment | 03/06/16 (from brief) | 17/11/16 |
| Closure | 24/06/16 (from brief) | 03/03/17 |
Explanation for variance:
Objective 2 was descoped from the project removing 15 days from the original estimate. The remaining days were saved by the DBA completing the work in the best case estimate and the ASTA lead admin also being the PM for the project.
The project has taken significantly longer than originally planned due to a number of factors;
- Delays during planning from a new contract PM being unfamilier with the process and having other higher priority projects to progress. This eventually led to the lead ASTA admin resuming the role of PM as she needed to be involved in the detail of the project regardless.
- Following the brief sign off, an initial conflict within Development technology resulted in the project being delayed by a month with the TEST upgrade moving from May to June '16. (see PICCL 4)
- This conflict resulted in increase risk of upgrading ASTA ahead of the business critical end of year work. In order to mitigate this risk and to plan around the start/end of year activities and shared parental leave and Paternity leave of two of the ASTA admins the LIVE upgrade had to be delayed to end August. (see PICCL 4)
- Critical issues identified during UAT delayed the project and required supplier input to resolve (see PICCL 5 and PICCL 6) . These issues pushed the LIVE upgrade back to October but the window of opportunity to upgrade LIVE before the monthly MI and the lead ASTA admins leave delayed this further to mid November.
- The LIVE upgrade took place mid November but intermittent issues required a further update to the software which was provided by the supplier mid December. This final update was successful but the closure milestone was pushed back to February to allow sufficient time post the christmas leave period to have confidence that the update resolved the issues. (see PICCL 7)
Key Learning Points:
- The lead ASTA admin and CSG Portfolio Manager was also the Project Manager for this project. Although many of the delays were related to technical input or issues it is possible that another Project Manager could have pushed through the issues to deliver the project quicker. In this instance the lead ASTA admin would have still been a bottle neck over the summer as the two other admins were on either shared paternity or parental leave for extended periods over the summer.
- At planning it was hoped that this project could have been delivered well before the start and end of year activities. On reflection and from experience of the last upgrade this should have been a higher risk.
- This was the first time that UoE had completed the upgrade without the supplier onsite for the upgrade. The supplier needed to be on hand for a number of actions during the LIVE upgrade as issues arose on the day that had not been encountered in TEST. It may have streamlined the process if the supplier had conducted the upgrade remotely but this would have incurred a cost of 1K per environment. As the support for this project was provided remotely and via the standard supplier support this did not come at a cost. This approach would need to be reviewed if the software is upgraded again.
- At closure the PM was alerted to the fact that the servers have a maximum 2 year support remaining, therefore, if ASTA is to be used passed January 2019 then a project will be needed to replace the infrastructure before that date.
Outstanding issues:
None