Completion Report
Project Summary:
The project delivered the upgrade of the Moodle platform to the latest version 3.0 as planned.
The deployment was straightforward with no major issues.
Objectives and Deliverables
| Objective | Priority | Status |
| Deliver improved user experience to teachers/learners through improved functionality. | M | Achieved |
| Increase the ability to widen user base to new DEI programmes (and current ODL programmes) through improved functionality. | M | Achieved |
| Maintain user community support by staying on ‘main stream’ release. | M | Achieved |
We will investigate the previously untested o365 module. | M | Not Achieved - due to resource conflict. |
| Deliverable | Priority | Status |
An upgrade of Moodle to the latest version of the 3.0 build. | M | Achieved |
| An updated TAD. | M | Achieved |
| An Updated BRD. | M | Achieved |
| A Theme and Template compatibility check to ensure all new features deployed are supported and tested. | M | Achieved |
| Updated plugins. | M | Achieved |
Evaluate the Office 365 plugin in the TEST environment (Mandatory). Should the evaluation be successful deploy the plugin to production along with the upgrade. (Desirable) | M/D | Not Achieved, but dialogue ongoing with ITI on how to implement MS Azure which is required to facilitate use of the plugin; Service Owner satisfied that this can be picked up in service. |
| Updated user help and guidance materials. | M | Achieved |
| A communication plan for all Moodle users to educate them on the upgraded features. | M | Achieved |
| Updated and tested Disaster Recovery plan. | M | Achieved (to be scheduled week commencing 1st August) |
Scope
- The scope of the project is to ensure that the current Moodle instance is kept up to date with software releases from Moodle.
- That the enhancements contained within version 3 are fully explored for and if applicable tested with the Moodle User Group.
- All non-standard modules/extensions are checked for compatibility
- That our hosting environment is fit for purpose. This will include an enhancement to the capacity of the service to provide for expansion.
- To plan for any potential impact on support teams once LIVE.
- To explore the capacity of the infrastructure through load testing and increase the capacity of the infrastructure as appropriate.
Schedule
The project started earlier in the year than the previous upgrade project, to allow for additional testing. The project was planned with some flex to reduce the impact of delays to individual tasks.
The schedule also relied on the Business Lead carrying out the Moodle configuration to due to resource conflicts within IS Applications Development Services; this was agreed at the start of the project and worked well.
Success Criteria
The following success criteria are judged to have been met:
- Current functionality (including plugins) work.
- Themes and templates are fully compatible with the new functionality.
- New enhancements resulting from the new version are made available to users.
- There are no issues with maintaining current data quality.
- There are no negative changes to the current data quality.
- User help and guidance documents are updated.
- Project documents can be added to the knowledgebase to assist future upgrades.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 50 days
Staff Usage Actual: 36 days
Staff Usage Variance: -28%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
- The project has underspent due to the fact that the upgrade encountered minimal issues during the upgrade.
- PICCL to be raised to return unspent days = 14
Key Learning Points:
- The project benefited from having the same / similar resource assigned to the upgrade as previous project therefore benefiting from their experience working together.
Outstanding issues:
- MI Universe - Logging Tables Change will be completed by raising a UNIDESK Call once course code format change has been completed via support, this was agreed by Service Owner and Application Management
- Testing of O365 plugin on test platform; this requires ITI to do setup of the Microsoft Azure environment with Office 365 and is pivotal to getting a working Moodle plugin; it may be possible to start this work on Test but work would need to be continued in service. A meeting with ITI and Stephen Smith from Service Management to agree minimum required.