Closure Report
Project Summary
The University was required to upgrade its Corporate Planner (CP) software and its supporting infrastructure.
The upgrade has allowed the University to continue to make use of the functionality in the Corporate Planner Enterprise product until the new Core System is deployed.
The Corporate Planner System provides data for Management Information (MI) reports required for the University's Full Economic Cost (FEC) and Transparent Application to Costing (TRAC) returns. In addition, the tool is used for budgeting and planning, known internally as the Transparent Model (TM).
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Project Resource Estimate: 20 days
Project Resource Actual: 21 days
Project Resource Variance: 5%
Explanation for variance
More time spent engaged with 3rd party than originally considered when planning the project.
Outcome
Development Technology and Service Management had a collective role in overseeing a change in infrastructure and the provisioning of a new virtual machine (VM) server.
The 3rd party, Account Ability undertook the upgrade of software and migration of the database from the old to the new server.
The Finance System Team upgraded both the client for Corporate Planner and a small number of PCs to Windows 10 to successfully prove full compatibility. A separate exercise followed outwith the project to upgrade the remaining PCs that made use of the 3rd party software.
All work went according to plan with no issues being reported during either user acceptance testing, deployment or business check-out.
All objectives were fully met and all deliverables completed.
| Ref. | Objectives & Deliverables | Priority | Achieved ? |
|---|---|---|---|
| O1 | To achieve an upgrade to the Corporate Planner (CP) application, 3rd party software from Account-Ability. | M | Yes |
| D1 |
The SQL virtual machine server will be built to version 2016. |
M | Yes |
| D2 | The Windows server will be built to version 2016. | M | Yes |
| D3 | The Corporate Planner software has been upgraded from 4.2.11.0 to 5.0.414.15. | M | Yes |
| D4 | Data has been migrated to a new database. This includes the Resource Allocation Model (RAM). | M | Yes |
| D5 | Upgrade of Client on the Windows 10 PC. | M | Yes |
| O2 | To provide a new adequately sized, performant and reliable infrastructure for the LIVE application. | M | Yes |
| D2 | An up to date Service Level Agreement is in place between Account-Ability and the University of Edinburgh for the service . | M | Yes |
| D3 | An up to date Service Level Agreement is in place between Finance Department and the IS Applications Division for the service. | S | Yes |
| O3 | To ensure full functionality continues as with that for the earlier version of the software. | M | Yes |
| D1 | The FEC return can be generated from the LIVE CP environment. | M | Yes |
| D2 | The TRAC return can be generated from the LIVE CP environment. | M | Yes |
| D3 | The TM reports can be generated from the LIVE CP environment. | M | Yes |
Key Learning Points
Given the small size of the project, there were no significant learnings of substance. However for completeness:
|
Description |
Recommendations |
Impact |
| Communication between the third party and the university was on the whole very good. The only slight was not getting timely updates after the installation of software onto the new VM machines. | A deployment plan was produced and shared with the 3rd party prior to go-live. Discussion beforehand meant that communication was excellent and had no adverse impact on the day of implementation. | Was beneficial |
-
Outstanding Issues
None