Completion Report
Project Summary:
The project completed to scope and provided the new the tuning changes specified. The success criteria for the project was that the ageing package within IDM will be run in a planned manner to clear the current backlog of updates, currently standing at around 27,007 affiliations. With the tuning changes in place , the ageing package is being run overnight to clear the back log. The overnight run time may be increased to process more of the back log and reduce the time taken to clear the backlog. When this is cleared, the ageing process will run to process affitialtions as the package was orginally designed to do.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 20 days
Staff Usage Actual: 30 days
Staff Usage Variance: 50%
Other Resource Estimate: 1 days
Other Resource Actual: 1 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
The project had several testing iterations which were unexpected. The project hit some issues with the functionality when testing had completed and the first deployment to LIVE had gone through. Version control issues had caused some code to be deployed which should not have been. The situation was rectified and the code re-released.
The SOA release to TEST also took more time than expected, the process for this has now been documented by technology management.
Key Learning Points:
The version control issues will be addressed by moving all the relevant code to SVN to allow better management of multiple code lines allowing support and project tasks to proceed simultaneously with confidence.
Additionally, the SOA part of the implementation took longer than expected to be deployed and the process for that has now been documented by Technology Management.
From an organisational point of view, this kind of project suggests that a higher throughput of smaller projects and smaller pieces of work could be progressed if the limit of 5 days for the support work cut off were increased. It would require the buy in of necessary resources and especially the project sponsor to be available to contribute where necessary but it would mean small pieces off work could be progressed very quickly without necessarily involving project services to the same extent. Version control processes would have to be in place to ensure support work was applied to project code lines to ensure code is carried through to the eventual project releases. Smaller pieces of work can be extremely beneficial to the operation of a business and can often be held up waiting for the appropriate project to 'piggy back' onto.
The PM has worked in other organisations where this approach has led to a continuous workstream of small projects which allows a quick response to system issues causing concern.
Outstanding issues: