Xe upgrade - "RETROFITTING" ???

[vikingsteve]

Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Hello all,

We are about to engage in an Xe upgrade (from B733.2 SP15) and whilst the planning for the technical steps is clear, I would like to ask people to post their experiences re:RETROFITTING.

Basically, if there are x days of development done on our B733.2 system to date, and y% of our modified objects are in JDE system codes (non 55-59) ...

... how many days of work 'z' can we predict will be needed for "retrofitting" after the technical part of the upgrade is complete ?

It has been suggested that we will need to devote 10% of x. (?)

If people kindly could post their experiences (z = what percentage of x, given y = ?%), we (and others) would be in a better position to plan our development after the upgrade to Xe.

Cheers,
Steve Murphy
B733.2 SP15 Ora8i HPUX 11.00

 

[DBohner-(db)]

RE: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Steve,

I wish it could come down to a simple equation... It doesn't. Your
retrofits may need to come down to a case by case basis.

For example... P4210 in B7331, unmodified, has about 20k lines of expanded
code. The P4210 in XE has about 24K lines of expanded code. Your developer
staff will have to find exactly where it goes - and if(IF) the functionality
hasn't been added in XE. If you have several thousand lines of expanded
code - you may have weeks of work.

I know you are looking at an estimate of time - but, it is not that easy.
I'd make an estimate based on the familiarity of your current staff with the
modifications that are in place - and what it would take them to
merge/rewrite them into XE. I wouldn't trust any automated processes -
ouch.





Daniel Bohner
[email protected]
www.existinglight.net
JDE - XE & AS/400
JDE - B7331 & MS SQL 7x

 

[Larry_Jones]

Re: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Steve,

10% of the original effort is in the ballpark of what it took us to verify and retrofit customizations from B7331 to B7333. We did not collect statistics but that seems about right.

Net new tables, applications, views, etc came across fine. Where we had to spend our time was in reapplying or re-doing customizations/fixes to standard JDE Applications, UBEs, and BSFNs. We had about 150 of these customized objects (roughly 50 each).

Factors you should be aware of.
1. Very few "major" customizations existed.
2. All customizations made were documented - we did not have to spend time guessing what the changes were.
3. The staff who made the changes originally were the one's who re-applied them.
4. Many of our changes were "bug fixes" to JDE's code. The new release allowed us to drop some (but not all) of these changes - after we tested them of course.


Larry Jones
[email protected]
OneWorld XE, SP 15.1
HPUX 11, Oracle SE 8.1.6
Mfg, Distribution, Financials

 

[Stewart]

Re: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Larry,
Right behind you on this one. I have spent some time on a customer site where:
1. Several major customizations existed.
2. No customizations made were documented.
3. The consultants who made the changes originally were no longer available.
4. For the UBEs: some of the changes were at version level and some at report level.

This meant the process of applying the changes was:
1. Find out what UBEs etc have been customised
2. Find the differences between the customised code and the original JDE code
3. Work out why there are differences - was it due to JDE problems, or changes the users requested
4. If it was JDE problems, are they now resolved?
5. Apply the remaining changes in the right place in the code
6. Document
7. Test
As for length of time, if we had realised at the start that it would have taken so long, it probably would have been better and quicker to develop from scratch.

Just my 2 euros.

Stewart
Customer: Xe/NT/Oracle, B732/NT/SQL
Office: B7331/NT/SQL

 

[Adrian_Chimirel]

Re: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Hi Steve,
Some of our most distinguished Listers provided valuable feedback, including
-the effect of different levels of in-house knowledge & documentation,
-the resources availability,
-the modified objects category (vanilla or custom)
...
-the imposibility to get them all in one simple equation.
I will add our recent experience of upgrading (the B7321) to Xe:
-some major customizations (maybe 20) of which 75% were documented
-as always, the other 25% - remember, undocumented - ate more than 50% of z
(if P4210 in Xe has 24klines versus 20k in B7331, imagine how different R42565 is in Xe versus B7321!)
-some other major customizations were added (say 10)
-few of the changes were done to JDE code (mainly bug fixes); y might be 7%
-the person who made the changes originally (and documented them) was the one who re-applied them (myself), and
-initially we went from B7321 to B7332, then B7332 got dumped in favour of Xe, therefore the retrofitting already done was a valuable training/exercise
-when time became critical (a week before going live), resources were available and a second developer ensured the project met its deadline.

y=7%, and
z=60% of x (Remember that includes the B7332 - say 30% of z)

Warm regards,
Adrian


Xe U3 SP17, Oracle 806, Citrix, HTML, FormScape 2.1 Ent RS/6000, Dep NT4

 

[drew_reilly49]

RE: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

I have worked with J. D. Edwards consulting managers in the past who used
60% as a rule of thumb for bringing forward modifications they had
previously made for clients.

This rule of thumb is reasonably accurate (you're not likely to go much over
or WAY under), provided you have either A) adequately documented your mods
or B)the developer(s) who made the mods are the ones doing the refit work,
and still remember what was modified and why. You may want to adjust your
estimate if your programming resource is significantly more experienced with
One World now than when they initially did the modification.


Good luck!

Drew Reilly, CPIM
Reilly Consulting Corporation
(708) 860-8202

 

[vikingsteve]

Re: Xe upgrade - \"RETROFITTING\" ???

Many thanks to everyone who has replied so far (keep em coming!).

After we have done our retrofitting, I will be sure to post the post-mortem here (hopefully a summary of all our experiences will help make the Xe upgrade less painful for someone else)...

Cheers,
Steve Murphy