FUJ00079173
FUJ00079173
ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
Document Title: Acceptance Proposal for Acceptance Incident 372
Document Type: Acceptance Proposal
Abstract: This document contains the agreed Closure Plan in respect of
Acceptance Incident 372.
Status: Issued
Distribution: Expert:
Peter Copping
ICL Pathway:
Library
POCL:
Bob Booth/Jeremy Folkes
John Meagher
Min Burdett
Jeff Austin
Author: DC Hollingsworth/ J C C Dicks
Comments to: ICL Pathway list
Comments by:
© 1999 ICL Pathway Ltd COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE Page 1 of 8
ICL Pathway
Acceptance Proposal
Acceptance Incident 372
FUJ00079173
FUJ00079173
Ref: CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Date: 16/9/99
0 Document control
0.1 Document history
Version
0.1
0.2
03
0.4
Date
23/8/99
24/8/99
8/9/99
16/9/99
Reason
Initial draft for comments
Version for Expert and Workshop 25/8/99
Version documenting the agreed Clearance Plan Plan.
Further version following Acceptance workshop action
documenting the agreed Clearance Plan Plan.
0.2 Approval authorities
Name
JH Bennett
JCC Dicks
T P Austin
Position
Managing Director
Customer Requirements
Director
Development Director
0.3. Associated documents
Reference
Vers Title
0.4 Abbreviations
ATE
Automated Targeting Engine
Signature Date
Source
© 1999 ICL Pathway Ltd
COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE
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ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
0.5 Table of content
1. PURPOSE
2. SUMMARY
3. CRITERIA...
4, POCL POSITION
5. ICL PATHWAY POSITION...
5.1 EVIDENCE TO ENABLE THE PLAN TO BE AGREED............0000000000+
5.1.1 Report of the upgrade exercise and technical briefing
5.1.2 Analysis of the Incident.
5.2 CLEARANCE PLAN....
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FUJ00079173
FUJ00079173
ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
Purpose
This document sets out the ICL Pathway proposal to the Expert with respect to
Acceptance Incident 372.
Summary
ICL Pathway accepts that there were some system management incidents during the
CSR LT1 to LT2 system upgrade activity during the Live Trial period. Although the
scale of problems was relatively modest for the number of outlets involved (299), the
problems encountered, if left uncorrected, would cause difficulties in rolling out future
software upgrades to a much larger live estate. Thus ICL Pathway accepted a Medium
severity assessment.
Since the Acceptance Incident was raised the three important issues, that were the root
cause of the incidents, have all been fixed and details have been provided to POCL.
Ongoing monitoring and reporting of the systems management operations are already
in place, with details provided routinely to POCL via the ICL Pathway web site.
Specific technical questions relating to the performance and scalability of the software
distribution product and its method of operation have been answered in a detailed
technical presentation.
Specific further commitments have been given concerning the nature of CP2116 and
the content of a “substantial software download”.
Other lessons learned from the upgrade exercise will be incorporated in the planning
of the next software upgrade, expected to be CSR to CSR+ during 2000. POCL will
be invited to participate in that exercise (as they were in the LT] to LT2 exercise), but
ICL Pathway cannot currently provide a date for this exercise since it has not yet
completed the planning stage. On the basis of the measures already in place, ICL
Pathway assesses the incident severity as “Low”.
Criteria
The Criterion under test is 37/1.
POCL position
Based upon the minutes of the Acceptance Board Meeting of 18 August 1999, POCL
contended that:
“there is lack of evidence on resolution to enable the current plan to be agreed”.
“the plan does not contain clear dates and deliverables”.
POCL have also expressed the desire to see a “dress rehearsal” of the next major
upgrade exercise using the (to be) developed scripts applied to a “small test estate”.
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FUJ00079173
FUJ00079173
ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
5.
5.1
5.2
ICL Pathway position
Evidence to enable the plan to be agreed
Report of the upgrade exercise and technical briefing
ICL Pathway has already provided a very full and detailed report on the CSR LT1 to
LT2 upgrade exercise. This report includes:
e the full history of the weekend exercise
© a statement of problem areas encountered
e the decisions taken to overcome various problem as they arose
e references to ongoing operating procedures that will be improved
¢ recommended improvements, that will be incorporated into future system
upgrade exercises
POCL has reviewed the report and raised further questions, to which ICL Pathway has
also responded. ICL Pathway has also held a detailed technical briefing session for
POCL with the ICL Pathway senior systems designer covering the overall system
management procedures and products used.
Analysis of the Incident
ICL Pathway has accepted that some aspects of the LT1 to LT2 upgrade identified
problems in the systems management process. Three specific issues were identified:
1. The procedure for delivering one element of Reference Data (“Type D”
Reference Data) was not properly established, resulting in this Reference Data
being missing from some outlets and delaying the upgrade programme whilst
in-flight rectification was undertaken
2. The procedure for dealing with “Error Type 221” reports from the Tivoli
system management software was incorrectly specified, resulting in operations
staff following an unnecessary, but safe, procedure to manually control the
software upgrade on a site by site basis, rather than controlling the distribution
automatically using the Automated Targeting Engine. This resulted in a
somewhat extended time to complete the upgrade compared with the planned
time.
3. A specific technical fault was identified within the Automated Targeting
Engine, causing long error messages from an outlet being incorrectly handled.
In addition potential improvements were noted to several operational activities during
the LT1 to LT2 upgrade exercise and these will be fed into the planning activity for
the next software upgrade, although this has not yet reached a formally planned state.
Clearance plan
The agreed Clearance Plan is based upon:
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ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
1. Actions to correct the three specific faults identified above.
These actions have all been completed and details made available to POCL.
2. _ The provision of additional technical details to POCL in response to comments
on the LT] to LT2 upgrade report, specifically on the use of the Tivoli
software and the capabilities of the ATE.
This has been completed in the form of a detailed pr
by the ICL Pathway senior designer responsible for
sentation to POCL staff
stems management.
3. The provision of ongoing monitoring of the software distribution process,
using the ATE, with regular statistics provided on the ICL Pathway web site of
software distribution to the live estate (software details, start date, 95%, 99%
and 100% complete dates).
This action has been completed with the exception of adding details on the
99% completion date. ICL Pathway offers to provide this within one month.
In addition if POCL wish to view the use of the ATE in this situation ICL
Pathway has offered to provide this. Systems management capability is an
ongoing agenda item at the monthly Service Review Forum meetings where
any questions or issues arising from this ongoing monitoring / reporting can
be raised for discussion and resolution.
4. The provision for joint input by POCL and ICL Pathway into the next upgrade
plan (expected to be CSR to CSR+ during the first half of year 2000), allowing
POCL to have assurance that any concerns arising from the last upgrade
exercise have been addressed within the plans for the next.
This undertaking has been provided. The dates and details for this exercise
are beyond the current planning window but planning is expected to start
towards the end of this year or early next year. (Note that each upgrade
situation is individually planned according to the volume of software to be
distributed, the size of the live estate, the hours of operation of the outlets
involved, etc.)
5. Although ICL Pathway believes the above actions are comprehensive, should
POCL have residual concerns as to the capability of the systems management
service to cope with a substantial upgrade activity, ICL Pathway has also
proposed that CSR+ will initially be distributed to an agreed subset of live
offices prior to full roll-out. This offers the opportunity to review software
distribution capability in a live trial environment prior to commitment to the
entire live estate. At the time of writing, this particular exercise lies beyond
the current planning window (and hence cannot be assigned a specific date)
but would form part of the agreed CSR+ introduction plan.
6. dll file checking.
ICL Pathway has developed a Systems Management task that checks the
structure of .dll files in prescribed system directories for content integrity.
This task can be executed on a one shot basis at a particular outlet, or can be
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ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal v Ref: GR/ACD/S72
ersion: 0.
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
consolidated with other systems maintenance activities in the regular overnight
script (this also reloads the Riposte desktop, for example).
CP 2116 is being implemented to provide this regular overnight capability.
ICL Pathway will continue to run the .dll contents check on potentially
affected files within the overnight activities until an agreed closure criterion is
achieved. This will be either:
e diagnosis and fix of the underlying corruption problem, or:
e —asubstantial software download has occurred followed by a clear period
of 3 months running with no detected .dll file corruptions.
Pathway confirms that .exe and .ocx files are also checked per CP 2116.
7. ATE (Automated Targeting Engine) functioning
The incident that occurred during the LT2 upgrade has been tested and fixed
(incorrect handling of long error messages). The fault was recorded and
cleared through the OSD fault notification process (PinICL is used for
Pathway related incidents). Further details have been supplied by OSD on the
nature of the fault and the resolution undertaken:
Messages in the Tivoli Log that exceed 512 bytes caused an error in ATE due
to a string size allocated not being long enough. The change required was to
terminate the log messages to a maximum of 512 bytes. Testing was
performed by simulating a Tivoli log with a message greater then 512 bytes
and was implemented with a new release of ATE.
As noted previously the ATE is in regular usage. ICL Pathway continues to
demonstrate its usage during normal operational management of the live
estate. Consistent with this usage, ICL Pathway will consolidate distributions
representative of the LT2 distribution during the next three months live
operation. (Representative in this sense is taken to include elements of both
Riposte and the Pathway counter applications.)
These distributions will be:
1. Riposte Peripheral Server (update #120). The characteristics of this
upgrade are that it involves complex interaction between parts of ICL
Pathway, and is defined by three Release Notes with detailed
interdependencies.
2. Consolidated EPOSS/Counter Applications Upgrade. This is
distinguished by its relative size, several Mbs.
Appropriate supporting documentation will be supplied, including
interdependencies, activity logs and statements of how any exceptions were
handled.
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FUJ00079173
FUJ00079173
ICL Pathway Acceptance Proposal Ref. CR/ACD/372
Version: 0.4
Acceptance Incident 372 Date: 16/9/99
5.2.1 Clearance plan summary
All important Clearance plan activities have been completed.
Ongoing monitoring of software distribution activities is already provided (with a
further minor extension planned) and an appropriate review forum identified for
resolution of any matters arising.
The principle of POCL involvement in the planning of such software upgrade
exercises is already established and will continue into future exercises such as the
CSR+ upgrade. This can include further assurance of software distribution capability
within a live trial context.
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