Through its impressive experience with 3DEXPERIENCE Upgrade projects, Processia has developed a tailored turnkey 3DEXPERIENCE Upgrade approach through a proprietary delivery framework resulting in improved quality, cost and efficiency.
Processia 3DEXPERIENCE Upgrade projects are based on a solid framework enabling the efficient and transparent upgrade of customer solution to the latest product release with minimal business disruption.
The delivery model is based on Processia’s exceptional long term acquired experience in 3DEXPERIENCE upgrades and associated challenges.
24/7 web accessible project dashboard:
Initial project phase consisting of the project kick-off and project environments and tools setup such as staging the customer environment in Processia infrastructure and enablement of continuous integration and automated deployments. The Web portal for project tasks and issues monitoring is activated and the customer is trained.
Customer environments for the targeted releases are installed and pre-configured, ready to received the upgrade builds.
In some case, the ouf-of-the-box product evolutions results into gaps or conflicts with customer customizations and requirements. This is usually identified as part of a preceding Processia Upgrade Blueprint assessment which results into a strategic agreement on High Level Design for gap mitigation. The detailed design allows to dive deeper in the implemented changes by highlighting the functional process changes and the implementation approach. This allows customers to fully understand and apply some final adjustments for approval on expected changes. This also allows extended business to forecast the expected change and plan updates to existing user documentation on which Processia can also optionally help.
This is the initial technical implementation phase in which the existing code and schema (application and database) are upgraded, customization conflicts resolved and all components validated through compilation process. In order to improve quality and reduce risks of regressions, the project team execute proprietary Processia automated merging tools to pre-process the changes. Final merges are then executed manually following a best practice. The resulting build is packaged with Processia proprietary automated deployment tools for preliminary smoke testing and is delivered into customer environments.
Customer data is transformed and uplifted to the latest application schema. In cases of high data volume and major application schema changes, the underlying data migration processing results into unacceptable business environment downtime. For those specific cases, Processia provides additional optional proprietary tools to bypass some performance limitations and accelerate the data conversion rates.
Each feature listed in the use-case registry (refer to Processia Upgrade Blueprint Offering) is tested and final fixes are applied. This phase delivers multiple sequential software builds in an agile inspire delivery mode. This allows the business community to validate the core features early and provide feedback while also supporting business transformation. At the end of this use-cases uplift phase, all features in scope are tested and stabilization is in progress.
In the cases of complex projects having a longer timeline, the opportunity is taken to introduce the latest available fixPack near the end of the project. This is done just prior the final validation & stabilization and allows the customer to go-live on the latest available fix-pack. Processia team leverages their proprietary merging tools to integrate the latest 3DEXPERIENCE functional fix pack minimizing risks of regressions.
This phase is initiated by complete regression testing, which can be monitored by the customer on the Web based Test Management Platform. Regressions are identified and fixes are scheduled. This is then followed by customer validation through an iterative process going from IT Team testing down to conference room pilot testing and end users UAT. Processia is supporting daily status touchpoint for issues clarifications and prioritization. Raised issues and their resolution process can be tracked within the web based issue tracking system, which is tailored for upgrade project specific needs.
Deployment plan is defined and approved between all parties in order to carefully plan the detailed go-live logistics and associated acceptance criteria. Cycles of dry-runs are executed to mimic the go-live process and identify any outstanding risks or issues. Finally, go-live is coordinated, final smoke-testing is executed and end-users are redirected to the upgraded environments. Processia team is on-site and engaged in a “War Room” approach to efficiently resolve any critical issue. Prior to go-live, hand-over of the updated maintenance instructions is delivered to the maintenance team or the AMS team (refer to Processia Application Managed Services offering). In some case, failover testing and load testing is executed. Processia optionally proposes its proprietary load testing system to simulate multiple scenario of users ramp-up across customer geography in order to test under load all layers of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Customer is supported through a warranty period in which potential issues can be raised and are resolved. Optionally an hyper care period is proposed with on-site end-user support.