Closure Report

Project Summary

This annual upgrade project was initiated to keep the version of Confluence no more than two point releases behind the most recent vendor release. The Oracle database was also to be upgraded from v12.1 to 12.2. At the start of the project a "Could Have" option to be investigated was to integrate the Wiki with EdGel to give the Wiki the same look and feel as the University website.

The database upgrade was done first from DEV through to LIVE, keeping the application upgrade separate. This was so that any issues that arose could be attributed to the database upgrade alone, and therefore debugging would be quicker and simpler. Also COM039 was working alongside the INF129 Database Resilience project which was moving the application and database VMs to the new stretch cluster. The migration to database VMs under INF129 was deferred to 2018/19 allowing us to proceed with the database upgrade immediately, which went through smoothly with no issues through all environments. Live was upgraded on 19/04/2018.

The Wiki application upgrade commenced on DEV at the end of March when the application stretch cluster became available. At this point the database upgrade had been tested in the TEST environment and was considered not to pose any risk for the application upgrade to begin in DEV. The application upgrade proceeded without any complications, and during UAT the only issues raised were that of connectivity to the Wiki once it had been upgraded for some users. There were no JIRAs raised during UAT for significant bugs, however it was noted that there was a problem with a macro not enabling some plugins on an application restart which has been referred back to Atlassian for a resolution. Production and Service Management are aware of this issue and have a workaround in place. It was agreed that this should not hold up the deployment.

Deployment on 20/06/2018 was completed ahead of the scheduled downtime;  no issues were reported by users after the upgrade went live .

The EdGel integration was descoped due to developer availability, so project budget was returned to the programme. A development resource is to be assigned to do the research for this piece of work under "ITSR60 Service Management Development Activity".

Objectives and Deliverables

Number Description

Priority

MoSCoW

Achieved?
Objective 1 Upgrade wiki service to the latest version of Confluence    

D1.1

Install latest version of the wiki (version 6.6) in DEV, TEST and LIVE environments Must Have Y
D.1.2 Fix Collaborative Editing - get this working with EASE Must Have Y
D1.3 Refresh of the DEV and TEST environments with the latest Production data Must Have Y
D1.5 Updated technical and support documentation Must Have Y
Objective 2 Test / Recode the IDM connector    
D2.1 Testing of the IDM connector in DEV, TEST and LIVE, fixing any issues that are noted Must Have Y - Testing carried out, no fixes required.
Objective 3 Upgrade the database from Oracle 12.1 to Oracle 12.2    

D3.1

Upgrade 12.1 to 12.2 on DEV, TEST and LIVE Must Have Y
Objective 4 To fully test the upgraded service and ensure it is fit for purpose    
D4.1 Thorough functional testing Must Have Y
D4.2 Appropriate load testing Must Have Y
D4.3 User acceptance testing of upgraded service Must Have Y
Objective 5 To ascertain if the Wiki could be incorporated with EdGEL     
D5.1 Investigation to provide estimations and work required to integrate the Wiki with EdGEL  Should Have N
D5.2 Integration of Wiki with EdGel if project budget allows Could Have N

 

With the exception of EdGel integration, all objectives and deliverables have been achieved

Scope

There was a scope change on 20/06/2018 to remove the EdGel integration from scope and return 36 days back to the programme.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 100 days

Staff Usage Actual: 63 days

Staff Usage Variance: -37%

 

Explanation for variance

  • The scope change to remove EdGel from the project resulted in 15 days being returned to the programme.
  • The upgrade of the database and the application completed with relatively few problems to overcome, so this resulted in a further 21 days, which includes contingency days, being returned to the programme.

Key Learning Points

  • Issue - One of the plug-ins on LIVE was on a different version from TEST as Atlassian had retracted that particular version due to bugs being reported just before we went live. As a result, when the plugin was installed on LIVE, the latest version was installed, but this was not the same version that was on TEST.

    • Lesson Learned - To check the version number of plugins when installing them against the DEV and TEST environments to ensure that we are installing the same version.

Outstanding Issues

  • The Macro not enabling plugins after a restart has been referred to Atlassian for a resolution. The server has since been restarted for patching, and a workaround is in place to restart the macros.This documented and is acceptable to applications management until a permanent fix is in place.
  • Research into the EdGel integration is to be resourced under the "ITSR60 Service Management Development Activity" code. This research will document the approaches required to integrate with EdGel, whether it is only header and footer changes, or a full re-skin, the recommendations and estimations .

 

Project Info

Project
Annual Wiki Upgrade
Code
COM039
Programme
ISG - Communication (COM)
Management Office
ISG PMO
Project Manager
Chris Konczak
Project Sponsor
Dawn Dodd
Current Stage
Close
Status
Closed
Start Date
08-Jan-2018
Planning Date
n/a
Delivery Date
n/a
Close Date
20-Jul-2018
Programme Priority
4
Overall Priority
Normal
Category
Compliance