26/4/13 Initial meeting of project team

Attending

Martin Morrey Alain Forrester, Peter Jackson, Richard Good, Morna Findlay

Version

• May upgrade to version 5.1 rather than version 4.
• Sponsor indicated version 5.1 preferred
• Upgrade would be staged:  Frome 2 -> 3, 3 -> 4 (then 4 -> 5)
• Pride ( who has already upgraded DEV to version 4) reports that the most effort  was required in the upgrade from version 2 -> 3 which had to be attempted several times.
• 4.3 end of life January 2015
• 5.1 has mobile support

Deadlines

To be done before start of term ( 9 September)

[Note - Morna asked Stefan what this deadline really meant and he suggested should be end of July as wiki is used intensively at start of term and many staff are unavailable in August

[Sponsor indicated that August 1st would be the preferred deadline]

Martin stated that if resources were not available to meet the start of tearm deadline then service management might investigate hosting the wiki elsewhere.

[Sponsor suggested Atlassian could be brought in as consultants to speed upgrade}

Reasons for upgrade

• Current version is unsupported.
• Current version has browser incompatibilities
• Improved WYSIWYG interface
• Mobile friendly features with version 5
• IE9 supported
• Improved performance

Scope

What is to be upgraded and tested?

• application
• plugins
• database
• connectors to WIKI (one or more of IDM, LDAP, other)
• integration with LEARN

UAT

• Impact on users could be high - some may have to switch to new "themes"
• Wiki owners will need to check their wikis
• ISkills will need to update documentation
• Helpline may need to update documentation
• Identify and involve "power users in UAT"
• May need 6 weeks in TEST

Teams to be involved

Service Management

• user communication
• integration/UAT testing

Devtech

• estimations
• upgrade
• technical documentation
• support UAT
• upgrade to LIVE
• signoffs

Development

• estimations
• technical documentation
• signoffs
• IDM/LDAP/Learn connectors

Others?

• Iskills? - training updates?
• user group - UAT and signoff

Communication

User community to be kept on board

Office 365 communication plan was good  and could be used as a model but this upgrade communications should be  focussed on staff

We need to gather a list of wiki owners - one pf service management's Napier students may already have done this.

New hardware

Use of virtual servers

Peter stated that:

• Atlassian do not recoomend using virtual servers.
• virtual servers  would  not offer us any performance inprovement - les processing power than current servers.
• As wiki storage  currently local - keeping data on SAN ( if virtual servers) might slow performance.
• New harwarde - new operating system will introduce additional overhead to project

Clustering

Peter reports that Atlassian:

• did not reccomend using servers in different buildings
• did recommend using dedicated network between servers
• did not recommend using separate node

Database Tier

Peter stated that the database tier could definitly be improved and that moving to the new database infrastructure is likely to enhance performance.

[Morna spoke to the PM of ITS100 who said that migrations to the new infrastructure were not expected to begin till June, but this could be pursued]

To guage any differences in performance between the old and new versions  suggest;

1. benchmark new database and version 2
2. benchmark new database and version 4/.5

Group management

IDM vs LDAP

There is a suggestion that the new wiki should abandon the IDm connector and instead use LDAP.

Richard said more work would be needed to establish whether the wiki could be made to work with LDAP.

Possible approaches would be:

1. upgrade wiki, upgrade IDM connector - consider migrating to use LDAP connector at a later stage
2. upgrade wiki, move to useing LDp connector immediately.

Other connectors

Physics have their own connector to the wiki and other schools or centres may too.  The project team will have to identify these connectors and liaise with the business owners for ttesting and possible upgrading.

ACTIONS

1. Alain to identity all connectors to wiki and their owbners or contacts
2. Alain to send Morna details of how to join wiki user email group
3. Martin to document  differences between version 2 and version 4.3, and version 2 and version 5.1 - including plugins
4. Martin to complie list of wiki owners
5. Martin to devise benchmark tests 
6. Morna to write new  draft estimate 
7. Morna to investigate when dev and devtech resources would be available
8. Morna to set up project web site.
9. Peter to check  if there have been any changes Atlassian recommendations for virtiual servers, clustering