PeopleSoft Upgrades Best Practices

Transcription

1 PeopleSoft Upgrades Best Practices Tom Reznicek and Patrick Savage

2 APRIL 7-11, 2014 Sands Expo and Convention Center Las Vegas, Nevada /COLLABORATE COLLABORATE 14- Quest Forum is THE source for PeopleSoft roadmaps & news. It matters where you register! All PeopleSoft education and events run through Quest

3 Agenda Introduction of Speakers and Emtec Project Success Project Shortcomings and Solutions Open Discussion

4 Emtec Big enough to do the work, small enough to care EMTEC THE COMPANY Serving clients for over 46 years 14 locations, including 8 development centers Over 1,000 full-time professionals Voted One of the Top 100 Places to Work by Cranes Chicago in 2012 Our consultants have an average of 14 years of experience. Nearly 45% have advanced certifications EMTEC SERVICES AT A GLANCE Emtec has completed more than 1,100 Package Application engagements, including: Oracle clients with more than 415 engagements EPM / Hyperion & OBIEE clients and 323 engagements Microsoft Dynamics and more than 255 projects Emtec is a premier provider of SaaS and Emerging technologies consulting, including 51 Salesforce Clients with more than 75 engagements, Including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Custom Cloud Emtec has performed more than 6.3M hours of application development and maintenance work ranging from Business Analysis to Product Development Emtec has served more than 565 Infrastructure services clients where we have: 4

5 Upgrade Projects Distribution Company Professional Services Professional Association Financial Exchange Financial Services Company

6 Project Successes

7 On Time Within Budget Kept a detailed project plan so people knew what was expected of them and when Had regularly scheduled meetings to review plan, risks, and resolve issues Kept upper management involved in project

8 Final Move to Production on Time Developed detailed task list for go-live weekend Leveraged PeopleSoft Change Assistant Had specific call-in times for progress reporting Used production like hardware on the final test move to production to get accurate timing for the real move to production

9 Latest User Data Security Migration Developed method to migrate permission lists and roles separate from user data Created diagrams and client deliverable to explain security migration plan

10 Trained Two Client Resources Resources had PeopleSoft Upgrade experience but did not execute test scripts Allowed upgrade weekend tasks to be split between 3 people Documented manual steps Documented common issues and resolutions

11 Reduced Data Conversion Time (72 hours to 42 minutes) Identified slow processes by running Application Engine tracing and data conversion steps report Tech leads tuned slow processes Multiple test moves to production

12 Move to Production Completed On-Time Used job properties in Change Assistant to record time, file name, and issues Let Change Assistant accept errors (i.e. duplicate keys) and clean after scripts run Created go-live spreadsheet with pre and post steps Bypassed some backups saving hours

13 Knowledgeable Team Technically strong and larger than previous upgrade teams Two Emtec resources to go to with concerns Knowledgeable Emtec PeopleSoft Upgrade Specialist Cyber Source configured without additional Cyber Source specific consultants

14 Prepared Microsoft SQL Server Turned off database logging before scripts started Monitored database file size Added memory to database server Set maximum memory usage on database to allow for other processes on server

15 Updated/Validated User Guides Guides consolidated multiple documents into one document per business area Created process flow diagrams for requisition and PO entry New testing documents for requisition and voucher approval, GL reports, and other processes Created technical check printer setup document

16 Minor Post Go-Live Issues Extensive testing: Leveraged existing test scripts by updating menu navigation and business process changes for version 9.1 Last round of testing done on production hardware End users involved in system and user acceptance testing Testing Cheat Sheets were created for users

17 Went Live On-Time & Within Budget Managed issues with Excel worksheet, included owner and resolution Assigned close action, which identified resolutions required for production and how to apply to production

18 Functional Ch. 2 & 6 Steps Completed Quickly Functional users completed Ch. 2 tasks to reduce the number of transactions processed Wrote SQL statements to perform validation checks before conversion Identified Ch. 2 & 6 steps that had to be performed for A in test moves to production

19 Project Shortcomings and Solutions

20 Test Scripts Not as Usable as Thought Review test plans and scripts upfront in project Existing data and business processes that were not fully documented Review any work already done

21 Canadian Payroll Customization Removed and Later Re-Added Verify removal of customizations with the business

22 Differing Data Conversion Hours Ensure final test move has as much in common with eventual go-live as possible Should have ensured three data conversion processes were able to run error-free prior to golive to accurately gauge run time

23 Applied Large Maintenance Pack Taking Longer in Production Keep more careful track of how much time it takes to apply large Maintenance Pack post-upgrade so more accurate estimate could be made

24 Initial Upgrade Pass Overlaid Delivered V9.1 Objects with V8.9 Confirm initial upgrade pass is correct Confirm filter that removed non-customizations is run Confirm compare report is configured properly

25 Go-Live Move to Production Fell Behind in Day 2 Escalate issues faster when processes run behind schedule Document how performance issues will be investigated and have required tools ready Do not apply new patches after last move to production All hand-offs should be done by phone call and

26 Identified PM Areas for Improvement Keep checklist from RFP to make sure everything taken care of Some deadlines missed by project phase Assign 1-2 people to check with everyone regarding environment restarts and refreshes

27 Longer Testing Than Estimated Test check printing earlier for MICR and signature fonts Test nvision reports earlier in process Have Hyperion environment refreshed and ready for PeopleSoft testing Test credit card transactions through to Cyborg After initial install, test system while consultants on-site Test on same operating system (64 bit) as production

28 Open Billing and Payable Transactions in Database from 2001 Identify open transactions early in upgrade process and clean up transactions before go-live Run Ch. 2 tasks to identify open transactions to clean up

29 Environments Required and Migration Path Not Communicated Define environments and naming at the start Define migration path and how environments will be validated and kept up to date Do not build test environment too early in upgrade Define how performance issues will be debugged and have proper tools installed on database

30 Wrong Initial Move to Production Confirm the Initial Alter Audit is complete before starting to use an environment

31 Application Engine Jobs Run Manually Instead of Running Change Assistant Install PeopleSoft Change Assistant on Windows Admin Server Workstation version does not allow for automatic processing of application engine jobs

32 Security Migrated Twice and Custom Objects Built Twice Apply the security after migration of custom code Build database objects after migration of custom code

33 Knowledge Transfer Not Completed between 1 st Team and Current Emtec Team Document what was completed by first team and what will need to be completed by second team

34 Managing Competing Projects Fully understand scope prior to engagement Assign dedicated resources that are not part of upgrade Need detailed testing plan and approach that would provide fully configured environment prior to testing SWAT teams worked well when engaged New Linux Security took several weeks to implement Server storage issues but no determination of root cause Needed better escalation points for Tech Ops Architecture diagram needed more detail

35 Thank you for listening. Questions?