Overview
Background
Annual project to deliver annual software upgrade and other small essential changes to maintain a robust and sustainable service.
To upgrade the Scientia Exam Scheduler (ES) product from ES v3.5.9 to ES v3.5.11
- this will move the Exam Scheduler product to the latest release to ensure the product stays fully supported by Scientia, and to deliver small enhancements to the product.
The upgrade will be applied to DEV and TEST , then regression testing will be done by business users in the Exams team before applying the upgrade to LIVE.
The upgrade tech tasks will be done remotely by the supplier tech consultancy team (Scientia).
ISG Project manager will co-ordinate the upgrade tasks and testing.
Testing will include testing of the upgraded product plus feeds to downstream systems - Calsync for Exams , BI Reporting and Exam web timetables.
The project activity has to be squeezed into the Exams business cycle between the end of the Exam Scheduling for the August 2019 resits , and before the start of scheduling for the main Dec 2019 exam diet in early Sept 2019
Scope
It is proposed that there are 3 work packages for this project:
1] WP1 - Upgrade Exam Scheduler from ES v3.5.9 to ES v3.5.11 in Sept 2019
2] WP2 - Deliver small enhancements to the connector from Student systems to Exam Scheduler ( Scientia Tech consultancy) in Oct 2019
3] WP3 - Deliver small changes / complete tasks as identified in the 10 JIRAs carried over from the SEP SAS005 project, include testing of cleardwon script to do deletion of old data to improve performance of LIVE system
JIRA Summary ( from SEP SAS005) :
TTU019-10 Exam Scheduler LIVE - Performance issue - check server logs and resources on the servers - app and db servers
TTU019-9 Instructions for users after Windows 10 upgrade
TTU019-8 Data mapping change to Extra writing time - Add new Suitability-key = 100 (100%)
TTU019-7 Small Room tag error in LIVE <5 and <25
TTU019-6 Diet 30 to be redundant
TTU019-5 Exam Scheduler v3.5.9 - slow response times in LIVE
TTU019-4 Exam Scheduler LIVE > Tools > Metrics > Back To Back Students - Execution Timeout Expired
TTU019-2 Exams db views - Handover to BAU - TBC- IS S/W Dev team or SSP Dev team - Developer access to Bamboo / GIT tool for the UoE-exam-timetables db views on exams-db-dev and exams-db-test
TTU019-3 New Connect workflow job to filter students by future exam diet, and only import student changes for specific exam periods ( diets)
TTU019-1 'Fixed start date' for CHEM09009 not updated when fresh data imported as part of ES-05A-Exam-Requirements-Selector Connect Job
All 3 work packages will require extensive testing by business users in the Exams Office in TEST , ahead of deploying changes to LIVE
Objectives and Deliverables
| No. | Description |
Priority MoSCoW |
Owner |
| O.1. | WP1 - Upgrade Exam Scheduler from ESv3.5.9 to ES v3.5.11 with minimum downtime and minimum disruption to business as usual activities | Must Have | All |
| D.1.1 | Upgrade DEV and TEST | Must Have | Scientia Tech team |
| D.1.2 | Complete Integration testing in TEST - of end-to-end solution - incl Incoming data feeds, Exam Scheduler application and downstream data feeds | Must Have | IS production team |
| D.1.3 | Complete UAT in TEST - regression test of existing functionality | Must Have | Exams team |
| D1.4 | Complete UAT in TEST - new functionality | ||
| D.1.5 | Upgrade LIVE | Must Have | Scientia Tech team |
| O.2 | WP2 - Deliver enhancements to Connect workflows for the connector from Student Systems to Exam Scheduler | Should | All |
| D.2.1 |
Complete build of additional prompts added to Connect – ES-03 Import Students to allow for:
|
Should | Scientia Tech team |
| D2.2 | Complete integration testing in TEST - connection to Student Systems | Should | IS production team |
| D2.3 | Complete UAT in TEST | Should | Exams team |
| D2.3 | Deploy to LIVE | Should | Scientia Tech team |
| O.3 | WP3 - Test cleardown of historic data to improve performance, and do cleardown in LIVE | Should | All |
| D3.1 | Run Scientia cleardown script with date defined by the Exams Office, sign-off in TEST , then apply to LIVE | Should | UoE project team |
| O.4 | WP3 - Complete work on non-urgent JIRA backlog carried over from SEP SAS005 project | Could | UoE project team |
| D3.2 | Work through the 10 JIRAS carried over from SAS005 | Could | UoE project team |
Benefits
WP1 - Upgrade to ES v3.5.11 - These 4 features in the new release will provide specific benefits to the UoE
WP2 - Improvements to the Student Systems connector should improve the quality of student data in Exam Scheduler and more tightly manage when data is imported in to Exam Scheduler. The improvement to how Student name changes are handled - should reduce distress caused to students when they have changed their name and it has not been updated in Exam Scheduler.
WP3 - Cleardown of old data from previous year should improve performance of the Exam Scheduler system - as advised by Scientia
Success Criteria
WP1, WP2 and WP3 are successfully delivered with no degradation of the service to Students and Staff
Project Milestones
| Build WP1 - Upgrade DEV & TEST to ES v3.5.11 20-Aug-2019 (Done) |
|---|
| Plan End of Planning 06-Sep-2019 |
| Accept WP1 - Complete system testing and UAT in TEST 09-Sep-2019 (Done) |
| Accept WP1 - Acceptance sign-off for Upgrade 10-Sep-2019 (Done) |
| Deliver WP1 - Upgrade LIVE to ES v3.5.11 18-Sep-2019 (Done) |
| Deliver WP1 - Deployment review 02-Oct-2019 |
| Build WP2 - Complete build of Connect workflow changes 31-Oct-2019 |
| Build WP3 - Work through JIRAS 31-Oct-2019 |
| Accept WP2 - Completion of Integration testing and UAT 15-Nov-2019 |
| Accept WP3 - Test and deploy changes for each JIRA 15-Nov-2019 |
| Deliver WP3 - Complete JIRAS 19-Nov-2019 |
| Deliver WP2 & WP3 - Deploy to LIVE 20-Nov-2019 |
| Deliver WP2 & WP3 - Deployment review 22-Jan-2020 |
| Close Project Closure 31-Jan-2020 |
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Snippet from ES v3.5.11 release notes | 42.01 KB |
