We are working on the release of RAFT II. This is a major release. This checklist tracks is the current release path of RAFT II to the service operations, primarily from the Business Intelligence development team to Customer Support, Training, and Server & System Administration.

Change Management

• Enter release date, and other significant dates, on Change Communications Calendar.
  • Exchange resource name: IS&T: Change Communications
  • When these dates change, communicate to ist-pipeline list.
  • This has not been done in a while, dates have changed a lot.
• Planned major milestones recorded on wiki home page

This documentation is for planning the release of RAFT PhII to the support areas of IS&T. Other parts of the project plan and implementation details that are not relevant to support teams should go elsewhere.

Checklist

Working on order of priority and chronology.

Initiation

• Define points of contact from IS&T Teams to Engage, right.
• Form release team.

Planning

Executing

• Update datacenter SLAs with technical, financial, business contact information.

From Resources

• Enter release date on Change Communications Calendar or email dates to release-core@mit.edu.
• If you require a custom installer, complete SWRT's Installer Support Request Form at least two week prior to release.
• Complete Release-Decision Template.

From Impact (including high-impact items though this project really doesn't rate)

• Create/update portfolio listing (TBD).
• Place release date on Change Communications Calendar or email dates to release-core@mit.edu.
• Send announcement and change log to releaseist-core@mitpipeline@mit.edu, stakeholder list once release is complete.
• Update any known open issues (Jira, Request Tracker) affected by release and close.
• Search http://ist.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org and http://kb.mit.edufor any articles that would be invalidated by release and update as needed. Contact istweb@mit.edu if you are not sure how to update this documentation.
• Contact IS&T Communications for public release announcement.
  • If sending outside of IS&T, send draft release announcement to IS&T communications team at least 2 business days prior to release.
• If actual dates do not match previously expected dates, update calendar.
• Contact help desk at inception to determine proper level engagement.
• Contact training at inception to determine proper level engagement.
• Contact documentation at inception to determine proper level engagement.
• Contact key stakeholders at inception to determine proper level engagement.
• Inform ist-pipeline@mit.edu, pipeline of release at least 1 business day prior to release.
• Consider how to support early adopters or pilot users, phase out current version?
  • Pilot release in May, community release in June. Still no hard transition plan for RAFT I users?
• Review need to de-support of previous version(s).
• Discuss release with DITR.
• Contact production@mit.edu to schedule publication of software grid to coincide with sending of release announcement.
• Inform release-core@mit.edu of release at least 1 business day prior to release.
• Send software grid revision to production@mit.edu for review at least 1 business day prior to release.
• Execute (Send announcement, post software for download, etc.)
• Contact DLCs at inception to determine proper level engagement
• Contact Testing & QA at inception to determine proper level engagement
• Contact User Experience at inception to determine proper level engagement
• Consider how to support early adopters
• Create communication plan

From Risk

• Search http://ist.mit.eduand^{Image Removed} http://kb.mit.edufor^{Image Removed} any articles that would be invalidated by release and update as needed. Contact istweb@mit.edu if you are not sure how to update this documentation.
• If posting new software, contact the Software Release Team to ensure that previous and new versions are archived in their definitive software library.
• Test software on all supported operating systems.
• Create testing plan.

Notes

We are a pilot for IS&T's product-release checklist. We used it as a base for this plan though it was developed for distributed/desktop release. Notes for Release-Core.

Product-Release Checklist. You might not have authorizations to view the release-core wiki.

Based on this system's criteria, RAFT is Resources: Moderate, Community Impact: Moderate, and Risk to IS&T: High.

• , communications to current users.
• Create communication plan, based on stakeholders identified in prior steps.

Configuration Management

• Critical Path: Need stable test environment!
• Migrating from RAFT I environments to new, clean VMs for RAFT II
  • raft-test in place, needs PHP downgrade?
  • raft-r1, new raft production, does not exist yet.
  • Await decision on budget for drupal-based online help systems. bi-help-dev installed on temporary system so documenation staff can begin work.
• Update datacenter SLAs with technical, financial, business contact information.

Release and Deployment Management

• OLA: business-support team engagement, OLA in development: Service Levels Development
  • Developing blanket OLA between business-support and Business Intelligence team.
• Code management/versioning and continuous integration plan with release engineer. Deploy from Bamboo or directly from SVN.

Evaluation and Testing

• See "evaluators" list at right. Responsible parties for internal evaluation. Must sign off. Second architecture review still required by this group.
• Input and sign-off by Usability Team: Usability & Accessibility Reports.
  • Stakeholder committee schedule in place, core business users signed up for rolling usability-test plan.
• BI Team to provide smoke-test/system health page for Customer Support?
  • business-help and business-intelligence teams to perform smoke tests for every patch or update during burn-in period (six week from go-live).

Knowledge Management

• Training Plan
  • Training mutual venture of SE Training team and COUES Training team.
  • Training curriculum, work with Training to ramp-up Help Desk (business-support).
• Online Help: SE Training, Mark Wiklund.
  • are we still doing this?
• Develop RAFT escalation scripts from Tier 2 (business-support) and Tier 3 (raft-support). Support Escalations Outline