Completion Report
Project Summary:
Project Review
With work on the new CMS in progress, this project was required to ensure that until all sites are migrated to the new CMS, we can ensure that the current CMS and underlying database will continue to be supported. Secondly ageing hardware, namely the front end servers in TEST and LIVE, was to be replaced. To this end the project was split into two phases, one dealing with the upgrade work, the second with the hardware.
In order to ensure which version of Polopoly was suitable, a sandbox installation was configured and the recommended version applied. During this work several serious issues were encountered where the customisation in Polopoly was not compatible with the new version. In total over 60 days were spent investigating and fixing issues. At the end of this work one show stopper remained that we could not fix and that the vendor Atex, while acknowledging that this required a fix that only they could apply, did not plan to invest any time in fixing. After negotiations and a review of our configuration with the Atex, an agreement was reached where Atex would continue to support our current version on Oracle 11g. The application upgrade was then de-scoped from the project and the DB upgrade completed successfully without any serious incident and with the expected downtime. Since the Database upgrade there have not been any major issues where Atex support has been required. This concluded phase one of the project.
The second phase of the project, to replace the front end servers on TEST and LIVE, was competed to the scheduled time scales as well as within the estimated budget. There were a couple of minor issues which arose during or shortly after deployment. These were not picked up at UAT but quickly resolved when identified.
In summary, this has been a very successful project. The delivery of this project has provided the basis for business continuity until sites are migrated over to the new CMS. In particular the project team has worked very well together, communication between the various teams was excellent, resulting in the fast resolution of issues as they arose.
Objectives and Deliverables
| Objective | Deliverable | Success Criteria | Delivered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upgrade Polopoly to the latest version |
|
| De-scoped |
| Migrate DB from current infrastructure to new Oracle 11g infrastructure |
|
| YES |
| Ensure that hardware reaching end of life is replaced. |
|
| YES |
Scope
As described in the project review the application upgrade was de-scoped from this project. The other deliverables where all successfully met.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 132 days
Staff Usage Actual: 147 days
Staff Usage Variance: 11%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
The initial estimate of 132 days during planning was increased to 150 days as a result of the investigation work required before the decision not to upgrade the application. After this re-estimation the project remained in budget until completion.
Key Learning Points:
Lessons learnt:
- Had we engaged with the vendor at the outset of the project, we may have avoided some of the 60 days spent on investigation in to the new application version.
- If another upgrade is undertaken, it would be worth explicitly testing generated lists from events, so this should be added to the relevant procedures.
- Code changes deployed under support were not replicated on the new servers. This oversight could be avoided by recording this requirement in JIRA prior to deployment.
Outstanding issues:
There are no outstanding issues. Decommissioning of the old servers will be completed in the week commencing 30/06/14.