Re: Regression Testing for All Information Systems (Project Change Request, M5A1)
This is an emergency document deliverable to you as your project encountered a significant issue which requires an immediate decision from you to resolve so we can move forward.
Executive Summary
This undertaking is a sub-project of the project of the total relocation of Pro Service’s employees and facilities from its current location in downtown Honolulu to a newer Hawaii Kai facility. This project’s goal is to move and re-install all IT/IS hardware and software into the new facility and to conduct training and support to all employees upon completion. Time is of a critical factor as IT/IS services are essential to the day-to-day operations. There is only two and a half days allotted for the project duration with no allowance for any delay.
There are four goals or phases. The first is to dismantle all facilities, pack and transported by a third party mover. The second is the purchase and delivery of new hardware and software to the new site. The third is the unpacking, set-up and testing of all equipment, systems and services and revive normal operations. The last one is the in-house training and support for staff and to outside users of extranet applications.
In this project, the company had taken opportunity to purchase or upgrade selected hardware and software to maintain satisfactory systems for reliability and performance. Inability to do so would have continued carrying the risk of end of vendor support.
Description of the Issue/Change Request
The request is regression testing on all internally developed systems which also includes the payroll and customer management system. This would involve testing all functions of the application systems. We have calculated that with our current complement of only 3 software engineers, it would take us 90 calendar days to complete.
Options and Analysis
One of the items purchased was the operating system of the systems servers which houses all the enterprise applications which included our internally developed resource planning system. We were changing the operating system from Windows Server to the less costly Linux. In our research, we learned that all we have to do is just to recompile our developed systems and the change of operating systems should be transparent to normal operations. We were confident and also because the transfer of office was already at hand, we decided to forego a cursory test.
We were able to install the new operating system and re-compile our ERP application system but there came out a few important functions that were not working. We were able to modify the code and make it work but this cast great doubt on the integrity of this system and other internally developed systems. To remove the risk of service failures during operations and instead of just going live and monitoring for bugs, we are thus proposing this change control. We know that this is not an acceptable option without denying systems services company-wide. Therefore, we are presenting four options that will address this issue.
Option 1 – Stick to the Original Plan
This is a variation of the do-nothing option which means that we will go on and proceed according to plan. We will install the new software, test, operate, monitor for bugs and fix as we go along. Both associated and secondary debugging would hopefully catch all the bugs but we doubt this greatly. From our assessment, we are carrying a high level of risk with a probability of almost certain and an impact of high. In terms of operations, the likely scenario is an average of two bugs will show in a day and 3 man-days each will be required to fix the bug. We estimate that 30 days of operation will reveal all bugs and another 30 days more to fix and stabilize the systems.
With an estimate of 60 bugs with an average of three-man days to fix, we would need an extra 3 software developers who will work for us for two months. The estimated cost would be $30,000.
Option 2 – Cancel the Activity
This option is to stop the ongoing activities on software and restore the systems back to their points when they were still operating in the old site. This would entail re-installing again the Windows operating system in the servers, restoring the back-up data and re-starting the old systems. There would be minimal disruption in this action which would take only about 1 to 2 days. No perceptible changes would be experienced by users but we would still carry the low risk of system trouble and discontinued vendor support. We believe this risk is still manageable for one more year at the most. This would give us enough time to carry out the full regression testing in a separate test server.
The downside would be the problems with the vendors who are insisting on the monthly maintenance fee as stated in the contract. It so happens that it was not stated whether the new operating would have to be in operation for the maintenance fee to be applicable. This would definitely be an issue and there is an even chance that we would be paying for free for a year. For $1,000 a month for software maintenance, this may cost us $12,000. The full regression testing will cost us $15,000 for 2 software testers for 1.5 months.
Option 3 – Replace the In-house Applications with Software Products
There are now software applications that can be bought off-the-shelf which can do our in-house systems’ functions by at least 90%. We believe that replacing them now would remove the problem of bugs. However, the time and effort would now be transferred in the migration of the data and transforming it so the new products can process them. The cost would be the price of the products and the migration support that we will get from the vendor. This would amount to around $75,000. Our software engineers should be able to set-up the products and migrate the data in about as month.
This is the most drastic as it will be total replacement of application systems. In the long run, we would no longer be too dependent on the original software developers who we pay once in a while for bug-fixing and consultancy. They will be replaced now by the vendor and a monthly maintenance fee like that for the operating system. In perspective, this was the vision anyway in the future but we are now considering it this early because of the problems caused by the transfer.
Recommendation
The urgent need is to restore normal daily operations of the IS/IT systems and this can be accomplished by Option 2. Option 1 can also accomplish this but the resulting downgrade of system performance would be severely unacceptable. Option 2 would be better but we can’t let that persist for too long because we already have made an investment in the new operating systems and we cannot delay their use for so long. We do not want paying for expenses without having gained value. Option 3 is opportunistic and is also highly desirable because it represents future plans but it is too costly at the moment as we have just spent a lot for the office transfer.
The recommended action therefore is Option 2 with the additional effort for negotiating the temporary suspension of the maintenance fees and the additional cost for regression testing. Due to the critical nature of this request, please let me know your decision by mm/dd/yy. If I do not hear from you, then I will follow up with you shortly after.
