Closure Report
Project Summary
This project was initiated to ensure that the underlying framework for MyEd is up to date, starting by carrying out an assessment of the suitability and complexity of the upgrades then to carrying out the upgrades themselves.
This project has successfully completed:
- The assessments
- Upgrade to uPortal v5.0
- Upgrade to React
- Upgrade to JDK to OpenJDK v1.8.0_262
The start of the project encountered some issues around developer availability, the SAS020 MyEd Finance Channel project had requested the developer's time to complete a piece or work in March before being paused, resulting in resource being re-allocated to complete the assessment work in April.
The JDK upgrade went ahead as planned in February on DEV and TEST, but errors highlighted a dependency on uPortal being upgraded, so a rollback was carried out and the JDK upgrade re-scheduled to take place after uPortal in each environment.
The completed assessments for uPortal, React, and Notifications found no issues to be of any concern in upgrading. The order in which the upgrades would be carried out were reviewed and the React and uPortal upgrades in DEV commenced in May. Upgrades to TEST were carried out in June, with UAT completed in July. The deployment to LIVE was carried out at the end of July, with JDK being upgraded in early August. The upgrades have been successful, both in execution and the in use afterwards.
The lessons learned from WPS004 noted that it would be more efficient with one developer rather than splitting development time between two. This worked well in WPS006 as the developer was able to concentrate a larger chunk of their time on the project, rather than have the continued start / stop associated with having smaller time slots.
A note of thanks must go to the project team who put in the hard work to make the multiple upgrades possible.
Objectives and Deliverables
| Number | Description | Priority | Owner | Achieved? |
| Objective 1 |
To continue working on the outstanding issue from WPS004 - the MyEd LIVE navigation issue |
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| D1.0 |
Resolve MyEd navigation Live deployment issue covered in Jira 54: https://www.jira.is.ed.ac.uk/browse/WPS004-54: |
Should | Software Dev / Dev Tech | YES |
| Objective 2 | To assess and upgrade uPortal | |||
| D2.0 | Assess if there are any fixes or changes Unicon can make for the uPortal upgrade | Must | Software Dev | YES |
| D2.1 | Fixes applied by Unicon prior to the uPortal Upgrade | Must | Software Dev | N/A |
| D2.2 | Upgrade uPortal | Must | Software Dev | YES |
| Objective 3 |
To upgrade to Open JDK |
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| D3.1 |
Complete the upgrade to Open JDK |
Must | Dev Tech | YES |
| Objective 4 | To assess and upgrade React in this project if viable | |||
| D4.0 |
Upgrade assessment for React |
Must | Software Dev | YES |
| D4.1 | Upgrade React | Must | Software Dev | YES |
| Objective 5 | To assess and move Notifications to Open Source in this project if viable | |||
| D5.0 | Assessment to Notifications | Must | Software Dev | (to be updated on doc review) |
| D5.1 | Move Notifications to Open Source | Could | Software Dev | NO |
| Objective 6 | To research, document and implement if viable - improvements to the student and staff interface | |||
| D6.0 |
User research carried out by WAC. Review of student interface from previously identified issues, documented and estimated. |
Must | Website & Communications |
Partially Testing done by student intern, documented but not estimated. |
| D6.1 |
User research carried out by WAC. Review of staff interface from previously identified issues, documented and estimated |
Must | Website & Communications | No - resource unavailable to complete in this project |
| D6.2 | Carry out the improvements documented in D6.0 to the student interface | Should | Software Dev | No |
| D6.3 | Carry out the improvements documented in D6.1 to the staff interface | Should | Software Dev | No |
| Objective 7 | Review whether it would be beneficial to move to using Containers | |||
| D7.0 | Analysis carried out by Software Development on the suitability of moving to containers | Must | Software Dev | YES |
| D7.1 | Configure to use Containers | Could | Software Dev | NO |
Deliverables D6.0 was completed to the estimation stage, this can be carried over to another project where an estimation can be made.
Deliverable 6.1 was not completed as the resource was not available in this project.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 100 days
Staff Usage Actual: 121 days
Explanation for Variance
Project extensions caused by resourcing issues that occurred during the first period of the project have lead to extra days needed to complete at the end, and a requirement for time in the 2021/22 financial year. The resourcing issues were caused by a higher priority finance project requiring developer time before being paused.
There was a rollback required for the JDK upgrade after it was found to be dependant on the uPortal upgrade.
There was an extension to the closure period as there was documentation to be completed.
Outcome
Key Learning Points
| Issue | Key Learning Point |
| UAT ended up being carried out over July and was rushed to meet deployment deadline | UAT needs to be a long enough period in order to fully test the upgrade, but also if it is carried out over the holiday period, there needs to be adequate business cover to be able to complete this. |
| Deployment milestone had to be moved due to exams | At the start of the project, PM to take note of exam dates to plan the deployments around this |
| After completing the JDK upgrade it was found that the upgrade was incompatible with the current version of uPortal, so had to be rolled back |
With multiple upgrades within the same project, the release notes need to be reviewed to check compatibility between components to avoid a deployment / rollback then further deployment down the line. |
| Missing milestone for "Documentation review complete" may have prevented slippage at the closure stage |
Create a milestone for "documentation review completed" before moving onto the next phase of the project. This will be a definite end point in the evaluation phase. The assessment evaluation phase and start of the DEV upgrades need to have a period of time in-between to review and discuss the contents of the evaluation and what the project can implement. |
Outstanding Issues
There are no outstanding issues, but the "Should" and "Could" have deliverables that have not been completed should be reviewed for inclusion in the next project.
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 estimatedvsactual_graph.jpg | 42.44 KB |
