First off, the engineer in charge of this project will have to examine the cur- rent environment at the company. There are two major reasons to do this:
1. To find out what is currently available that can be leveraged or cannibalized for the new project
2. To determine if any conversions or backward compatibility are needed
It is likely that the company already had an accounting system, and as such you will need to determine what that system is, and what it is running on. If you can continue to use the current hardware, this will of course save considerably in terms of your budget. Other considerations, such as where to put new hardware, or how to install the software, may be influenced by the current network configuration as well.
As you are documenting the current configuration, there is one more critical question to keep in mind:
Considering that there is already a server in place doing the job (in this case it is the accounting server), why is this upgrade being done, anyway?
The way to answer that question, of course, is to talk to people. Find out what the problem is with the current system. If users say it is too slow, you may want to concentrate on making sure that the hardware for the new server is even stronger than you would normally plan. If the upgrade is being done to gain a particular enhancement, be sure you research how the imple- mentation of that enhancement is accomplished on the new system. The key here is that upgrades always mean change, and users generally resist change. By assuring that the new system will immediately show its best side to the users, you make it more likely that they will accept it, rather than grumbling.
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Once you have talked to users about the system, you may want to go back and modify your original project goal. Perhaps remote access to the server is one of the critical areas driving the upgrade. In such a case, you may modify the plan to read like this:
Purchase and install a database server for the company’s new SQL-based
accounting application, and upgrade the company web server to allow it to host software that provides a web interface to the new database. Part of the business case for upgrading the accounting server, in other words, was to provide web access to data. This will be a key area that those judging the success or failure of the project will examine, so you will want to make sure that the hardware and software on the web server are up to the task.
Budgeting the Project
Once you are confident of what it is you need to do, the next step is to sort out what additional resources you will need to complete the project. Examine the list of what you have and what you need, which was compiled
First Impressions Are Everything
True story: I was involved in upgrading an office of 150 people from ccMail to Exchange/Outlook a couple of years back. We had trained the users on how the new system would work, tested all the server and workstation software for compatibility, and the entire rollout crew was confident that the new system would go in without a hitch. People went home on Friday night, we migrated them over the weekend, and when they came in Monday morning, all their data had been transferred to Outlook and everything worked great.
Unfortunately, that day was also the day that the “Melissa” e-mail virus debuted, and it hit our location at about 10 A.M. The entire network was com- pletely brought to its knees within minutes. It took days to get things back to normal, and by then most users were begging for their ccMail back. They didn’t necessarily know why the system had failed, and they didn’t really care…they just remembered that this hadn’t ever happened with the previ- ous system. One oversight, in other words, can make you and your work look really bad, and it takes a long time to overcome a bad first impression.
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in the last step. The administrators in the example we are using have come up with the list in Table 2.1 (costs are as of Fall 2001, are not necessarily the best prices available, and are used for example only).
T A B L E 2 . 1 Preparing a Hardware Budget for the Upgrade
Item Current Configuration Recommended Configuration Cost to Upgrade Database server hardware Pentium II 450 256MB RAM 27GB storage Dual P4 1.2GHz 1GB RAM 80GB storage $12,000
Database NOS Windows NT 4 Server
Windows 2000 Server
$500, plus $40 per user for CAL upgrade Database server software Access 97 SQL Database Server $2,000–$10,000 Depends on license type Database Custom Access
accounting database SQL-based accounting database $50,000, plus fees for extra modules and customizations Web server hardware P III 800 256MB RAM 18GB storage Current config OK NA Web server NOS
Sun Solaris 8 Current config OK NA Web server interface to SQL Server None. Server currently runs Apache web server Custom option available from vendor for Solaris/iPlanet $1,500 to upgrade to iPlanet
Client hardware Varied Current hard- ware OK for new software
NA
Client software Windows 98 98 Certified by Vendor
Plan the Installation 47
Besides these costs, a number of other items must be considered and worked into the final cost of the upgrade. These include:
Software training for users, help desk staff, and administrators Downtime caused by the upgrade
Reduced initial productivity due to user unfamiliarity with the new
database client
Training is a commonly neglected part of an upgrade process, but proper training of users prior to the upgrade makes for a more productive—and less chaotic—environment in the days following the upgrade. Because of this, you should try to work training dollars into the budget early on, and make sure that those dollars stay in the final budget!
All too often, training funds are allocated as part of the budget for a project, but are then among the first things that managers cut out if the project is running over budget. Fight to keep these dollars, because trained users are happier, less confused users, and happier users make for happier administra- tors. Remember that it won’t be the manager going desk-to-desk to explain how the new software does this or that differently.
Once you have a good idea of what needs to be done, and how much it should cost, you need to plan out this last cost element—as measured in time, not money. The implementation of a large project like ours will require a good deal of human effort. This includes administrators testing and implementing the new configuration and help desk people dealing with addi- tional support needs and any downtime users experience when the upgrade process is underway. It also includes time spent in training sessions and, if the project is complex, might include allocating funds for a consultant to assist in crucial phases of the upgrade.
The term consultant covers a broad range of job descriptions. Some consultants work for a particular company, and are highly specialized. It is likely, for instance, that the software company that makes our new SQL-based accounting package has employees who know the app well and are expert resources on issues regarding that particular software. Other consultants roam the landscape.
Either of these types of consultants can offer an excellent way of bringing additional expertise onto your project. Hiring a consultant is expensive, of course, but an experienced engineer might help you avoid problems, help
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optimize the solution, and in the end save you time and money. For this project, we will be bringing in a consultant from the software company to review our plan and will be bringing that consultant back for the weekend of the actual migration. To be safe, we have budgeted for four days, though only three should be needed. As it is likely that the total bill for this assistance will be $1,000–$1,500 per day, the consultant will be kept for the fourth day only if absolutely needed.
The final estimate for the upgrade comes in at around $100,000 when training, consulting, hardware, and software are all added up. This will likely cause some serious questions to be asked about trimming costs. If you need to reduce the cost of the project, try to cut a bit from everywhere rather than just cutting out the consultant, the training program, or the web server upgrade. If the company wants an $80,000 upgrade, find a way to scale back evenly.
In the real world, there are times when the decision about what to cut is not left up to the engineers. In these cases, you sometimes just have to deal with the cuts where they occur, and do your best to minimize their impact. If man- agement makes unwise cuts, that can mean that if you don’t deal with the potential problems then, you look bad, and your users suffer. The manager who caused this will probably be too busy golfing to even notice that there is anything wrong.