UPGRADE CONSIDERATIONS Appian Platform

Transcription

1 UPGRADE CONSIDERATIONS Appian Platform ArchiTECH Solutions LLC 7700 Leesburg Pike #

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction... 3 Upgrade Overview... 5 The Upgrade Process... 5 Evaluate Upgrade... 6 Planning an Upgrade... 7 Evaluate System Architecture... 8 Execute Upgrade & Perform Functional Test... 9 Support User Adoption (UAT) Production (PROD) Support and Enhance Conclusion Page 2 of 11

3 Introduction In a constantly evolving software marketplace, where new product versions with functionality enhancements are released several times a year, it is essential for companies to stay up to date. Specifically, the Appian platform has significantly matured over the past few releases, expanding in functionality, scalability, and usability, especially with the move from Portal to Tempo and the introduction of SAIL forms. ArchiTECH Solutions is committed to assisting customers in maximizing the value of their current software platforms, leveraging the benefits of these technological advances to improve the end user experience and to increase the return on investment. The following whitepaper is meant to help guide clients through the software upgrade process, as well as provide some specific information regarding the solution enhancements in the Appian platform. This whitepaper is not meant to be a comprehensive to-do list or a replacement for the Appian Forum s technical upgrade information (i.e. Rather, it should be used as a supplement to help broaden knowledge about software upgrades for web based applications like including Appian. When planning an upgrade, there are many factors to consider: functional changes, infrastructure requirements, timeline, business needs. Above all, the initial item to consider is the reason for upgrading. Upgrades are performed for a variety of reasons, including: Access to new functionality to meet your latest business objectives and grow within your market Stay compliant with industry regulatory requirements Improve your existing application, both in performance and usability Appeal to your current user base and help drive greater operational efficiency Stay current with the latest product support offered. At the time of this article, Appian no longer supports versions lower than 7.6 and encourages you to upgrade in order to stay compliant. Determining the reason for upgrading will help set the foundation to better answer many of the other factors involved in the upgrade. ArchiTECH Solutions has a team of experienced consultants ready to help you assess the reason for upgrading, create a full lifecycle plan, execute the software application upgrade, and perform post-launch support and enhancements to maximize the application s utility, scalability, and supportability. ATS consultants treat an upgrade project with the same diligence and accountability as with a solution implementation. We hope this whitepaper will provide you the building blocks on which to begin your upgrade analysis, and we encourage you to reach out to our team with any questions or support requests. Page 3 of 11

4 Throughout this whitepaper, pay special attention to the People, Process, Technology framework that influences each decision: PEOPLE All people involved in an upgrade project must be considered, from administrative resources who help facilitate the funding, to executive stakeholders who support the initiative, to involved business and technical users that can test and define requirements. To effectively coordinate and manage these people, roles and responsibilities of the upgrade team should be concretely defined. Typically, this upgrade team consists of a smaller subset of the initial implementation team, in addition to product specialists who are familiar with the new features of the product and upgrade best practices. ATS consultants bring the necessary upgrade experience and product knowledge to guide you through the people decisions, helping define a team and associated responsibilities. PROCESS A big part of efficiency within an upgrade is an accurate identification of all policies and processes that govern your project lifecycle. Awareness of all development processes, code migration procedures, and resource onboarding schedules is essential for effective process management. If you have ongoing development and code being pushed to production, ensure that your upgrade project fits within the existing release cycle. Proper management of business operations and development cycles will keep your software upgrade on schedule and without any interruptions. TECHNOLOGY Finally, technological dependencies need to be met before any upgrade process can begin. Technology leads should review the upgrade documentation, ensuring that any necessary changes in server, databases, plugins, etc. will be mitigated prior to beginning an upgrade. Researching any technological dependencies is also important to ensure the new software version will remain compatible with external systems. In addition to these hardware and software Page 4 of 11

5 dependencies, comparing a list of deprecated functionality within the Appian platform to the current application code is important in ensuring the existing solution will remain fully functional in an upgraded environment. For an Appian upgrade, the Appian Forum is a good resource to start finding some of these technological answers. The Release Notes provide a list of enhancements as well as deprecated functionality with each new version. The Forum will also indicate whether your upgrade requires an intermediary version before upgrading to the latest version (ie. upgrading from Appian 5.x first requires a migration to before a higher version). After compiling a list of all necessary upgrades for supporting systems, it is essential to reevaluate the project scope and timeline. Additional technical and functional considerations are required when migrating an application from Appian Portal to Tempo, as the entire user interface will be updated. Upgrade Overview An upgrade is similar to an implementation project - it involves various stakeholders, it must adhere to a timeline, and it impacts the end users. Thus, it should be handled with the same level of diligence. The upgrade should follow a modified software development lifecycle complete with an upgrade process, approach, delivery milestones, testing phases, end user impact analysis, solution enhancements, and user Upgrade Process Summary: Evaluate Upgrade and Determine Need Plan Upgrade and Coordinate Resources Perform Functional Testing Facilitate User Adoption Move to Production Support & Enhancement acceptance. The Upgrade Process A key advantage to the upgrade process over a new implementation project is that you can leverage the pieces put in place during the initial implementation, such as the project team knowledge base, the migration policies & procedures, the existing code base, and the existing infrastructure. With this backbone of knowledge and work, upgrades can be much more efficient and less time consuming than implementations. Software upgrades are, therefore, more cost effective as they provide a greater return on investment once implemented. With that in mind, the upgrade process should flow through similar high-level phases as a typical project implementation lifecycle, from project initiation through production. However, this time each phase will be made easier, leveraging the existing frameworks and knowledge accrued. Project Lifecycle Phases: Page 5 of 11

6 Initiation Elaboration Construction Transition Production Evaluate Upgrade Questions to ask: What is the scope and upgrade objective? What is the organizational impact? What is the team structure and their roles? Where can I find information about Appian? Resources regarding Appian products: Review Appian product documents and interact with other in the Appian Forums Read Appian Blogs Stay current with the latest Appian add ons developed by the community Step 1 in an upgrade evaluation is to determine the reason for upgrading. As mentioned above, an important component of a responsible upgrade is an evaluation of whether the reason for upgrading is sufficient to drive the process through the entire lifecycle. Any application in production being actively used by members of your organization and/or external users represents an investment in time and money from your user base (either directly or indirectly). So you should always consider any change to your systems carefully and leverage the experience of change management practices. The next step in evaluation is a critical assessment of your organizational readiness: Does the upgrade have executive buy-in? Do you have the resources needed to perform the upgrade? Does the new release (or desired upgrade release) satisfy the technical and functional requirements of your business need today and for the next few years? What are the potential negative impacts of an upgrade and can they be mitigated? Another key area to consider is platform support for the software application. Often, product companies only provide platform support for certain newer versions. An important question, then, is, does your application risk losing support from the product vendor, and what impact would that have on your organization? Appian, in particular, automatically upgrades its cloud customers to the latest version. However, on-premise customers need to perform periodic upgrades to stay current with support. Thus, the supportability question is ever important for onpremise customers. Whether your company has an internal project evaluation steering committee to help decide the viability of the upgrade or not, essentially the evaluation process should leave you with a Go or No-Go decision before committing Page 6 of 11

7 ArchiTECH Solutions has the experience and capabilities to assist in the system architecture evaluation process by recommending appropriate sizing for various environments. For Appian upgrades in particular, ATS would walk the customer through a Sizing Survey to assess factors such as, complexity of the application, number of total expected users, peak system load, etc. resources to the effort. If the decision is to move forward with the upgrade project, obtain formal buy-in from stakeholder organizations and kick-off the project in a face-to-face meeting. Formality, visibility to upper management, and team building can be important in securing the cooperation needed throughout the process. Planning an Upgrade Once you ve made the decision to upgrade, carefully planning the project will be crucial to success. As mentioned above, you should treat an upgrade project with the same diligence as a new implementation. A project plan should be created to define a specific scope and any upgrade objectives. It should include features that you expect to implement, their benefits, and the potential impact to your organization. Planning an upgrade gives you a chance to revisit your original application objectives, and research new features or enhancements to the product that may better fulfill those objectives. Additionally, consider doing a gap analysis of your As-Is and To-Be upgraded states to ensure that you have accounted for organizational impacts from the People, Process, Technology framework described above. A web based application is made up of more than just the platform software; it is always a union of multiple software and hardware systems. In order to effectively deal with these often complex integrations, you should plan your upgrade team to reflect the varying complexities of your project. A typical upgrade team could include the following roles: Business users Application owners Technical Lead (a SME on the Appian product) Functional Business Lead Project Manager Database Administrator System Administrator Release coordinator Application Testers Application Trainers Technical Upgrade SME Finally, when planning an upgrade, it is important to utilize all of the resources and documentation at your disposal. In addition to the experience of the ArchiTECH Solutions team, you can also leverage product specific information. Appian, for example, provides the following sites where users can interact and obtain product documentation: Page 7 of 11

8 Review Appian product documents and interact with other in the Appian Forums Read Appian Blogs Stay current with the latest Appian add-ons developed by the community Things to remember when executing: Communicate to all users and stakeholders the execution of the upgrade Back up all engines of data, database schemas Document the details of upgrade steps, procedures and issue resolutions Perform Regression, End-to- End, Quality Assurance, User Adoption Testing to ensure upgrade is fully integrated with existing code and applications Update training manuals and application documentation reflecting the code modifications in the new release Schedule a maintenance window when activity is typically low, and plan an outage timeframe based on your experience with pre-prod Evaluate System Architecture Before executing the software platform upgrade, an evaluation of the underlying system architecture is necessary to ensure the upgrade will remain compatible. Changing any part of the system architecture increases the complexity of the upgrade project; thus, only after careful evaluation and planning should any modifications occur. If the architecture changes are necessary, it is important to create consensus amongst all stakeholders to minimize disruptions. Furthermore, you should plan to complete full performance testing prior to the go-live date to identify any downstream issues. It is imperative that these assessments be made prior to the upgrade execution to remove uncertainty and allow the project team to focus on other upgrade related details. Platform: Most upgrading customers choose to remain on their current hardware, operating system, and database architecture. However, many customers take advantage of the upgrade timeframe to upgrade hardware and transition to the latest supported version of the operating system and other third-party software. Any decision regarding platform modifications should be made early on as the platform often drives most, if not all, of the software utilized. Middleware: Another key decision is which middleware platform to use. In making your decision, be sure to understand any licensing and support considerations from the software product company. Specifically, the Appian Suite supports many middleware versions, and a closer look at the Appian Forum will provide a detailed list of those options. Non-production Hardware: It is important that all testing environments are sized adequately for handling the anticipated testing loads. Stakeholders are often only concerned with the production environment sizing and assume that performance is not important in a test environment. Bad performance during critical testing Page 8 of 11

9 phases, however, can not only provide users with a bad experience, but can also affect the upgrade schedule by hindering completion of testing and delaying system deployment. Execute Upgrade & Perform Functional Test Although the execution of an upgrade project is typically a smaller initiative than with a new implementation, the execution and testing of the upgrade is where most of your time will be spent. The timeline for execution would become lengthier if there are on-going development and enhancement activities, as there would need to be a code freeze for a period during the execution of the upgrade. When executing an upgrade, it is important to identify any risks and what if scenarios in order to avoid downstream issues. Any change to your business comes with inherent risks and you should plan for these risks as early as possible. An upgrade will impact your organization from a people, process, and technology perspective so it s important to ensure that you list your risk scenarios and mitigation strategies to cover all three aspects. In addition, be prepared to re-asses this list, as new risks may be introduced during initial sandbox execution, regression testing phases, or even during user acceptance. A standard upgrade would follow the following path: Perform Test Iteration It s important to familiarize your team with an upgrade before updating any Pre-Production system. Therefore, we strongly recommend initially performing a test upgrade in a Sandbox environment. This will allow your team to both gain experience and flush out any issues before you move forward. 1. Freeze code in all environments (depending on circumstances, development may continue, but developers would have to perform an additional series of code checks once DEV is upgraded) 2. Set up a Sandbox environment to mimic your Production environment 3. Initiate a backup of all engine data and database schemas 4. Copy all Production code and configurations to the Sandbox 5. Upgrade the Sandbox using the application upgrade guide on Appian Forum 6. Create a detailed customized upgrade guide that reflects your specific upgrade steps (It should capture procedures that are specific to your environment. Document any issues and their resolution. Your customized upgrade document should include all the lessons learned) 7. Smoke Test the application for basic functionality (ensure that the data sources are set to test data) Retrofit and Fix 8. Perform Regression and End-to-End Testing on the Sandbox environment 9. Identify and resolve any run-time application issues that may arise due to the upgrade (take note of any areas where custom code or plugins are used as these may be areas that could break during an upgrade) 10. Add the issues and resolutions to the customized upgrade document, to build a comprehensive lessons learned list Page 9 of 11

10 Perform Pre-Prod Upgrade 11. Freeze development 12. Snapshot environment configuration and backup all code and database schemas 13. Use your customized Internal Upgrade Guide to perform upgrades on all Pre-Prod environments, beginning with the Test environment 14. Continue to document any issues and their resolutions, expanding upon the Internal Upgrade Guide Quality Assurance Testing (QA) Quality Assurance Testing relies on an accurate and descriptive set of test scripts, prepared to validate the latest production release. Any modifications made to process flow or application code to accommodate the new software version would need to be incorporated in the QA test scripts. Full testing coverage and thorough script execution is essential prior to upgrading any higher environment. With Appian, code migration across development and testing environments is made easy through the use of applications. An application is a package of all relevant code components that can be easily exported from one environment and imported into another. Existing objects are updated in the imported environment and new objects are created. Support User Adoption (UAT) After sufficiently testing the application in the Pre-Prod environments, the final stage in the upgrade process is to solicit a larger audience to participate in the testing and sign-off procedures. If any modifications to the end-user experience were made, a sign-off and verification step is necessary to ensure the customer approves. Once verified by the customer, training manuals and other application documentation must be updated to reflect the code modifications in the new release, and supplemental training sessions should be held for key stakeholders. Finally, user adoption is essential in realizing the benefits of the application upgrade and modifications. The change management team should identify the leaders/influencers of your end users to discuss user adoption. The most important part of user adoption is communication; being clear about when/why/how the change will be implemented, and promising support to help users transition. End-users will be most receptive to proposed changes if they feel engaged and supported throughout the process. Production (PROD) Once you have ensured the upgraded application will not cause issues with the existing code, you have received sign-off from key stakeholders, and you have established a user acceptance plan, it is time to make a decision on when to release to production. If your steering committee or primary project stakeholders have given the green light for a production upgrade, ensure you have a clearly documented step-by-step upgrade document that includes all functional and technical aspects of the upgrade across all team members. Schedule a maintenance window when activity is typically low, and plan an outage timeframe based on your experience with pre-prod upgrades. Finally, follow standard operating procedures of production environment modifications, and rely on your Internal Upgrade Guide when executing. Page 10 of 11

11 Support and Enhance Ensuring that your end users are properly supported post launch is critical to success. Therefore, your upgrade plan should always include a period of support, which extends beyond the release date. The support team should be comprised of a subsection of the upgrade team with cross-sectional knowledge of the application as a whole. For projects with existing support processes, follow the same guidelines for your upgrade. After full adoption by the organization, it is time to consider potential application enhancements to take advantage of the latest software release. In order to maximize return on investment of the upgrade project, it is important to modernize the application through full utilization of additional functionality and features. Any new enhancements should be scheduled and implemented using a separate development lifecycle Conclusion Software products and their functionality offerings are constantly evolving to provide greater value and new advantages for your business. Appian, in particular, releases a new product version quarterly. In an effort to maximize return on your solution investment, it is important to stay current by upgrading your application, and implementing the new product enhancements to improve the end-user experience. Each organization must evaluate the costs, risks, and rewards of an upgrade in the same way it would evaluate a new business proposal. This whitepaper, written by ArchiTECH Solutions, outlines best practice tips to enhance your upgrade project s success. ArchiTECH Solutions has the breadth of knowledge and experience to help you walk you through every step of a software upgrade. Our consultants will guide you through the upgrade and technical assessments, planning, and execution your software upgrade, providing continued post-launch support and enablement. Bridging the gap between People, Process, and Technology 7700 Leesburg Pike #204 Falls Church, VA For inquiries: Phone: atsdelivery@architechsolutions.com Website: This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contr actual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Page 11 of 11