Closure Report
Project Summary
Questionmark Perception (QMP) is a fully featured online assessment system which has been in use at the University since around 2001. Questionmark Perception is the main centrally supported eAssessment system and it is used to underpin around 90,000 student assessments every year, including summative exams.
This project was to deliver the bi-annual upgrade of QMP, to move the University from (v5.7) of the system (delivered in 2015) to v6.
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Objectives and Deliverables |
Priority |
Delivered? |
Comments |
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O1 To approve statement of work by 9 March 18 |
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D1. Questionmark to provide statement of works to be approved by all parties |
M |
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O2 To deliver improved user experience to all users through improved functionality |
M |
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D1. Creation of new infrastructure: TEST and LIVE environments |
M |
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D2. Upgrade of QMP to v6, deployed to TEST and LIVE environments |
M |
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D3. Migration of data and settings to v6 (a test migration will take place before the full migration) |
M |
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D4. Load testing completed |
M |
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D5. Updated documentation
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M |
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D6. A communication plan for all QMP users to educate them on the upgrade features / timings.
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M |
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D7. Decommissioning of old servers |
M |
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O3 To increase the ability to widen user base to new programmes through improved functionality, and greater scalability |
M |
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D1. Custom GLO templates work on v6 |
M |
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D2. Formative login scripts work on v6 |
S |
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D3. Review branded templates (which offer functionality for different assessment settings) |
S |
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D4. Review custom banners |
S |
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Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 63 days
Staff Usage Actual: 135 days
IS Staff Usage Variance: 114 %
Other Resource Estimate: 63 days (Digital Learning Applications and Media)
Other Resource Actual: Not declared (not time tracked)
Other Resource Variance: N/A
Outcome
Questionmark Perception was successfully upgraded to version 6 within the advertised outage alert window however a configuration issue resulted in the work having to be repeated, therefore there was a delay releasing the service back to the user community.
Explanation for variance
More project effort than anticipated was used for:
- PM time and Project Team meetings.
- DevTech time: to support the multiple deployments through the new Test and Live environments; liaison with ITI on the infrastructure, server and OS settings, loadbalancer rules; MSSQLServer config and provision of copies of data to Question Mark; configuration and troubleshooting of Single Sign On (SSO);
There was unplanned additional effort for:
- Escalation to Senior IS Applications, and Learning Teaching & Web staff, and to SLT, with respect to project governance and issues experienced with the delivery of the project.
- Coordination of ITI resourcing by PM where additional work and support was required to the project, partially due to inaccurate. incomplete (and / or ambiguous) documentation provided by the supplier, and due to some configuration work having to be repeated / reversed as a result. There were a number of examples of such work throughout the execution phase of the project requiring significant additional effort to be recorded by the PM and DevTech colleagues.
Key Learning Points
- Several
Outstanding Issues
A few issues to be carried forward by DLAM now the project is being closed:
- Performance:
- Functionality.