Welcome to this session on the Solution Release. In this session, we're going to
look at a number of different tracks that occur during the solution release
timeframe and those will include change management and release management
training documentation project control testing which includes load and stress
testing stabilization and user acceptance testing so let's go ahead and
get started when we look at the overall solution release phase we've finally
gotten to the point where after all of the sweat and blood and all the
delivering of the iterations we're ready for the last run to the go-live date so
there's a bit more work to do but at least the finish line is in sight
so the first track that we wish to talk about is change management and release
management the duration of the overall solution release stage may vary
depending on the overall length of the project and the iteration development
stage the rule of thumb is that we usually have one week of solution
release for every five weeks of iteration development so here we can see
there's some general feeling of one to four weeks now the main thing in change
and release management will be the rollout plan and this includes a
step-by-step technical deployment script for a seamless installation of the
solution and that means all configurations and bootstraps should be
documented everything should be validated as far as the infrastructure
and any third-party integrations that are necessary so everything should be
installed configured and the connectivity should have been tested as
well there also needs to be a rollback scenario although it rarely needs to be
done we should always prepare for a rollback in case something goes wrong
especially for mission-critical apps and depending on the nature of the app
the impact that it may have on the operations team and how complex the
existing and new versions of the solution are going to be can
significantly affect the rollback alternatives and we need to be very
careful and consider these and plan for them in detail
for example direct solutions may have some sort of version rollback which
includes some sort of database snapshot which means we may have to restore or
publish different hot fixes to go ahead and make sure that the data and the code
actually stay in sync so we don't want to have any data loss and we don't want
any external systems to be out of sync because of the deployment so that
rollback needs to take that into account in assess in essence the rollout plan
should include a complete path to switch from the former app to the new app not
only from a technical standpoint but also from the operational standpoint and
that means that we have to completely understand the business impact of the
solution and make sure that the individuals the teams and the
organization's know about the new processes and tools so that everyone
will be able to pick up and adopt exactly what's going to be ready after
the go-live date ultimately this rollout plan is ensuring the value that the
business is looking for and we need to guarantee that everyone is ready to be
able to use the solution and to fulfill that value in that plan the next thing
as far as tracks would be training so first of all we're constantly working to
make our solution as intuitive and possible as intuitive as possible unlike
my speech and in this case not every application will need a huge amount of
training if you need lots of training you may want to think back and go is the
user experience really as good as it could be because if they need a lot of
training then maybe it's not as intuitive as we would like or some part
of it is is still too complex some applications and some solutions
just will have complicated types of pieces inside of them and that may
require training the training normally will be done by a business analyst or a
subject matter expert slash key user or champion and sometimes that actually
just consists of a train-the-trainer or the subject matter expert trains
someone who can then become the person to train the rest of the business and
depending on the type of application and the type of technical work that's being
done sometimes that can be recorded as a video for easier distribution if there
are a high number of distributed end users beyond training then there's
documentation we should produce a last version of technical documentation for
the solution now there is out doc which can be downloaded from the forge and
this is where out systems provides an automated way to generate some
documentation out of the project in service studio now we need to ensure
that the proper project handover to both IT and business occurs and that all of
the relevant technical and functional aspects of the application are fully
documented and passed on in some digital format and that could be design
documents user guides or the out doc information once the training and
documentation is done we then need to look at project control we'll be
finalizing any last work items and making sure that the solution release is
going to address all of the feedback that has been given from both the users
and the different types of business tests where we've done user acceptance
testing so there is a risk that if we focus on all of the other pieces of this
that we may not have all of the quality as far as the documentation and control
that we're looking for so one thing that can be a major task at this point is
actually doing different types of data migrations there may be some unforeseen
factors making sure that all of the different day
is completely right and at this point when the project is trying to determine
if there are any issues going up to the go-live date they will have to have some
meetings and make the final decision of a go or no-go
so that project control needs to get to the point where are all issues are
understood so that decision can be me from a testing standpoint now the full
solution is available so we should perform lots of end-to-end testing with
the business and making sure the users are getting the value and the users
needs are being met by the application so it'll be a number of scheduled
sessions to do all of these or acceptance testing and then there'll be
other types of testing put on top of this and that would include things like
load and stress testing so these would normally be performed by the development
team or experts because this requires building different test scripts and then
executing multiple scenarios with lots of real type of data to get some sort of
report on how all of these different tests will go we want to make sure that
the application is strong enough to handle large amounts of load and still
be able to respond in a timely fashion and then finally there's stabilization
and the user acceptance testing then we mentioned a little bit earlier here we
need to get the key users the business analysts and the testers to go ahead and
go through the different types of tests and provide final acceptance for the
functionality that's been delivered they could still reject things depending on
the types of findings and what they what they may be finding but there would be a
regular release cycle every other day to go ahead and attempt to prepare hot
fixes and get as many of these user stories accepted as possible now the
tech lead should not forget that they need to be working on all of the
different hot fixes and making sure they get into the different environments that
are going to be used for acceptance testing this week or set of
weeks can be very intense because the go live date is coming quickly and there
needs to be a lot of communication between many different roles here all in
a very short period of time so as this gets more and more intense
and we're constantly looking for that project control piece in the middle
which will be the go or no-go criteria there will be a lot of different
decisions and discussions that may need to be had ultimately the decision will
be made by the stakeholders and the stakeholder will be able to make that
decision as soon as they can have all the information about the different
types of testing that is done and the feedback that is coming but after this
we actually get to the far right hand side where we'll be going live so
finally after solution release part of this phase is to go live and that will
actually be the support of the rollout of the execution and at that point the
IT team and the business will have the new application in production so
everything will be ready for success and for them to continue using it so there
has been a lot of different discussions on all the tracks that will be necessary
to create a successful solution release thanks for listening and have a great
day