Closure Report
Project Summary
The legacy Windows hosting infrastructure (ucs-sequel & kb-iis-1) has been overdue for decommissioning for some time now. New infrastructure is in place to replace these but work has stalled due to resource availability.
Scope
- Migrate windows hosted websites to infrastructure running supported software versions
- Identify and remove unused websites and databases
- Decommission costly legacy physical servers
Objectives & Deliverables
This project was tasked with moving the content to supported infrastructure. The project brief detailed the following objectives and deliverables:
|
|
Objective/Deliverable |
Description |
Priority (MoSCoW) |
Owner |
Status |
|
|
O1 |
To move web-hosted services to supported and new technology Infrastructure. |
|
Alain Forrester |
|
|
|
O1D1 |
Completed audit of all web services and associated user contact details |
Must |
Service Management/Project Services |
Achieved |
|
|
O1D2 |
Users contacted and agreement to either keep or remove the associated web services, with audit trail and WIKi page. |
Must |
Project Services PMO |
Achieved |
|
|
O1D3 |
Move all agreed users web services to new infrastructure servers and remove agreed redundant services, with an auditory trail. |
Must |
Software Services/Student Interns |
Achieved |
|
|
O2 |
To reduce Infrastructure and maintenance costs, to sustain, despite their end of life |
|
|
|
|
|
O2D1 |
Provision of completion to Infrastructure Team (ITI) to enable decommission procedure on servers. |
Must |
Service Management |
Achieved |
|
|
O3 |
Reduce the risk of failure of unsupported servers |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Delivered by O1D3 |
Must |
Software Services/casual staff |
Achieved |
Benefits
- Infrastructure and maintenance costs removed on decommission.
- Stable web-hosted services for end users.
- Efficient service to end users as part of Service Excellence strategy 2025.
Success Criteria
- All users and hosted web services are removed from old servers.
- Users can access their required web-hosted services on new servers.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 50 days
Staff Usage Actual: 72 days
Staff Usage Variance: 144%
Outcome
Explanation for variance
There are several factors to explain the difference between forecast and actuals:
- During planning, it was anticipated to hire student helpers to complete most of the actual migration work. The recruitment process was unsuccessful. A project services student intern did help during summer 2018 for a limited period of time.
- The planning estimate did not consider service Management time being recorded against the project. After the project was in flight, a decision outside the project led to SM time being recorded directly to projects.
- Due to the fact that the majority of the work was undertaken by the technically very experienced Service Manager, no software development resource was required. Therefore the technical estimation for the project was high with no time from software development required.
- The project management time was slightly higher than originally planned however this can be accounted for in the significantly longer project duration.
Key Learning Points
- The initial comms with site owners was undertaken by the PMO. Due to the number of site owners, this was a complicated comms exercise which was completed in a smooth and efficient manner.
- The idea to hire a student to complete the migration work did not work out within the project timescales. There are two aspects to this; the first that the recruitment process took a lot longer than anticipated and secondly, the early part of semester two is not the best time to recruit when students have exams around the corner.
- The migration took considerably longer due to this work having to be completed by Service Management, which was carried out alongside business as usual work. This resulted in project work competing against other activities, often taking second place to more pressing service work.
- Despite the extended project duration the Service Manager, Alain Forrester, deserves a special mention for driving this work to completion. This is reflected in the comment.
The Business School work frequently with Alain and view him as an outstanding colleague. The School have highlighted both the support Alain provided in the School's move to cHost, and the service he continues to provide as exceptional.
Outstanding Issues
There are no outstanding issues.