Closure Report
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Project Summary
Background
The Scientia Enterprise applications are the University's chosen application suite for providing a shared academic Timetabling service. The Scientia applications also provide an ad-hoc Room booking service for Staff and Students via Web Room Booking.
The Scientia applications work on a separate database for each academic year. Each year, there are therefore tasks to create the new database and instances of each application for the next academic year. The roll-forward tasks take place in stages at appropriate times in the calendar and the applications are then re-pointed at the switch-over. For the 2021/22 academic year, this switch-over for LIVE feeds was carried out in the 3rd week in July 2021.
The start of the new Timetabling year in 2022/23 was Mon 25-July 2022
This is compliance work that is too large to be delivered within the current support budget and is therefore run as a project each year.
Scope
The scope of this project was restricted to the tasks required to roll forward the timetabling and room booking applications for use for the 2022-23 Academic Year. The roll forward tasks are as documented on the Wiki and include any decommissioning tasks.
This year, there wer additional tasks for the following
- a required upgrade to CalSync which was delayed from the previous roll-forward project
- complete the same CalSync upgrade for exam scheduling
- Moving the XML Data Feed for Bookable Rooms to remove reliance on the ColdFusion platform
The following are not in the scope of this project:
- Decommissioning of 20/21 database as this is required for historic reporting
- Remedial or enhancement work to resolve existing issues unrelated to the roll-forward project
- Investigation or resolution of existing LIVE production infrastructure issues
Objectives
The key objective for the project is to deliver the roll forward to allow activities (lectures, tutorials, labs, other misc classes) and rooms to be scheduled and allocation carried out for the new academic year.
Deliverables
The following deliverables have been identified for completion of the roll forward
The following deliverables have been identified for completion of the roll forward
Ref | Deliverables | MoSCoW | |
D2 |
CalSync Upgrade - Class Timetabling
|
Must Have | Completed in June 2022 |
D3 |
CalSync Upgrade - Exam Scheduling
|
Must Have | Completed in September 2022 |
D4 |
XML Feed to Bookable Rooms
|
Must Have | Not delivered - to be carried over to next project |
D5 |
Core timetabling applications - Roll-forward
|
Must Have | Delivered in December 2021 & January 2022 |
D6 |
Deliver web applications - Roll-forward
|
Must Have | Delivered in January & February 2022 |
D7 |
Decommissioning tasks - 19/20;SDB / RDB & Web apps / 20-21;RDB & Web Apps
|
Must Have | Decommissioned in January & February 2022 |
D8 |
Deliver incoming interfaces
|
Must Have | Delivered in April 2022 (Phase 1) and July 2022 (Phase 2) |
D9 |
Deliver Course Timetable Browser
|
Must Have | Delivered in July 2022 |
D10 |
Bookable Rooms Website
|
Must Have | Delivered in July 2022 |
D11 |
Learn Feed
|
Must Have | Delivered in August 2022 (at request of business) |
D12 |
Lecture Capture Feed
|
Must Have | Delivered in August 2022 (at request of business) |
D13 |
Reporting
|
Must Have | Delivered in August 2022 following resolution of issue preventing roll forward - see outstanding issues |
D14 |
CalSync
|
Must Have | Delivered in July 2022 |
D15 |
Switchover academic year in July and service wrap
|
Must Have | Delivered in July 2022 |
D15 |
Exam Scheduler Clear Down
|
Must Have | Delivered in October 2022 |
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 162 days
21/22 - 127 days
22/23 - 35 days
Staff Usage Actual: 138 days
21/22 - 106.6 days
22/23 - 31.4 days
Explanation for Variance
- The CalSync Upgrade had to be completed in specific business windows for the Teaching Timetable and Exam Scheduling sides
- The BI Reports roll forward was delayed due to an issue preventing the roll forward from taking place. This required additional involvement from the project team members from Dev Tech, Tech Man and Production Management, as well as the Service Management, to resolve.
- Completion of the XML replacement for bookable rooms was delayed due to competing priorities. The UAT will be monitored as part of the next roll forward project
Outcome
- New UOE2122 SDB was available in January 2022
- Web Applications for 22/23 were available in early February 2022
- Incoming Interfaces were updated in July 2022
- All Roll-Forward activities were completed in July and August 2022
- CalSync upgraded in Exam Scheduling and Teaching Timetable ahead of Microsoft retiring support for Basic Authentication
Key Learning Points
Successes:
- Clear instructions on wiki ensured each step was clear to the responsible team member to execute
- Processes automated in previous years continue to prove a worthy investment
- Project Team worked well together utilising hybrid team meetings
- Key milestones delivered on schedule
Issues / Changes during the project delivery:
- The development work for the move of Bookable Rooms from ColdFusion to XML has completed with the final merge request to be checked by the Software Development Team Leader. UAT will need to be completed as part of the next roll forward project
- The parent company of the main supplier went into Administration in August 2021. This had no immediate impact on the running of the UK operations, however the project team undertook a review of all services in the event of the collapse of the supplier. The parent company has been bought over and services are expected to continue.
- Resource Booker is the only cloud hosted piece of the timetabling suite. A series of steps were identified that would allow room bookings to continue within the Web Room Bookings platform.
- All current installation files and instructions of the other timetabling products were gathered by Development Technology and stored securely
- All wiki pages to be reviewed to ensure they are suitable for anyone to pick up and follow steps, rather than rely on specific knowledge
- The Procurement for the replacement timetabling system started and this required some of the project team to be involved in the procurement process. There was no impact on the delivery of TTU023 due to this.
- Changes in other projects switched TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 off. This prevented BI Tools from being able to connect to the timetabling universes meaning the roll forward to 22/23 couldn't be carried out. The Service Owner involved in the change was on leave which meant the Project Team had to investigate and resolve
- The Project Team worked with the Business Leads in the Timetabling team to ensure they had manual reports run whenever required ahead of the start of term
- Service Management raised support tickets with the supplier
- Investigations from team members in Development Technology, Technology Management and Production Management provided a fix to the issue by identifying where previous versions of TLS needed to be re-enabled to allow the roll forward task to be completed. This allow essential start of term tasks to be completed with no impact on Timetabling operations.
Outstanding Issues
- BI Reports Rollforward TLS Issue - Older versions of TLS were enabled to allow for the roll forward tasks to be completed. A longer term resolution will need to be investigated for this to allow the older versions of TLS to be switched off
- Bookable Rooms XML Rewrite - UAT to be completed