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ICL Pathway Progress Summary
for Input to Horizon / Pathway Delivery Meeting
24" November 1999
1 ACCEPTANCE
Progress against plan for the 13 former Acceptance Incidents forming the bulk
of the Acceptance Resolution Timetable is reviewed below in Acceptance
Resolution Timetable order.
211:
342:
390:
376:
378:
369 :
372:
298 :
218:
391:
314:
408 :
412:
The original plan completed on 1/11. The incident raised on 2/11 was
analysed and the extended monitoring period completed. Closure is now
again sought.
We await Closure.
The AP counter enhancement is scheduled for distribution 26/11.
Interface stability: There were 28 Cash Account Discrepancies not
caused by Reference Data (0.31%) and 17 incidents under investigation
(0.19%) at the time of writing.
Additional Reconciliation: The first Integration and Cycle 1 completed as
forecast on 17/11, the activities now running nominally within three days
of plan. The Cycle 2 and 3 activity will start 22/11.
To date there have been four occurrences. The diagnostic fix was
revised to address further varieties of this condition but has not produced
any result. Running with the diagnostic fix has been extended until
30/11.
Pathway has provided a paper describing potential improvements as
forecast and has no further actions.
POCL provided planning input to CSR+ on 3/11, and subsequently.
Pathway has no further actions.
The achievement for the monitoring period as a whole was 462.5 units
compared with the par figure of merit figure of 560. In fact the post
Energis spike, worth 89 units, could also be accommodated within the
target. The final report and handover were completed. Closure is now
sought.
The KnowledgePool report of Trainer Quality Monitoring is due to be
published to POCL on 22/11. CCN 543b (RNM training) was approved
10/11. CCN 566 (Training Window) is to be re-raised as 566a with
cosmetic changes 22/11 and is forecast for approval by 6/11.
The Wigan back gate work has now completed.
The Generalised AP/ manual will have been published 22/11.
The final weekly SLA measurements and review were published 16/11.
Closure is now sought.
Closure is now sought.
The severity dispute concerning Al 232 remains unresolved. The plan for the
low incidents was published 5/11.
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2 NATIONAL ROLLOUT PREPARATION
2.1 National Roll Out
As of 12'" November the final Horizon systems were successfully installed for
1999, thus totalling 1856 outlets Nationwide. Although the infrastructure
programme continues until the end of this month, Pathway implementation are
already underway with their action plan to review and amend the processes and
activities used to date in the rollout Programme.
Initial meetings have already taken place with PA consulting to agree terms of
reference and structure for the joint Horizon Implementation audit, which will
take place over the next few weeks.
2.2 Infrastructure Programme
We now have confirmation of the requirement for Millenium Dome and are in
receipt of the plans. The scheduled survey and preparation work will be starting
on the 14° December, with Installation taking place week commencing 20"
December, but will still require a CR from POCL to confirm requirements.
Surveys and preparations for trolleys are continuing, although a small number
still
require some rectification work.
Pathway have met with POCL to discuss the way forward on the “too expensive”
outlets which need to be re-introducing into the programme. It was accepted
that almost all of the offices will be reintroduced into the programme, but
ongoing discussions are taking place on how the costs will be apportioned
between ICL and POCL. Meanwhile, we are awaiting confirmation to proceed
with 190 offices which POCL have identified to us.
It is essential that efforts by both POCL and Pathway continue to ensure the
expedient release of suspended outlets back into the infrastructure programme.
2.3 Installation Programme
We have now completed rollout for 1999 and are in progress to review the
‘lessons learnt’ from installations, in order to plan for NRO in January 2000.
Scheduling recovery continues and is on track for all year 2000 activities to be
completed in accordance with the 16 week process and the published
installation plan. This assumes no further changes to the rollout plan are
introduced.
2.4 User Implementation and Migration
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POCL implementation, with Pathway, are due to visit Knowledgepool, Pathways
training supplier, on 19" November where assurances will be provided re: the
readiness of the training scheduling system for year 2000 rollout.
Training Systems
The Training Systems upgrade programme has begun with approximately 315
systems being PAT tested and RAM upgraded to 64Mb. This will continue until
15 December. These upgrades do not affect the Horizon system software but
will improve training system response times during training course activities.
AL218
All ICL Pathway actions on the Al 218 Rectification Plan are complete. A joint
meeting with POCL will be held on 22 November to assess performance to date
against the agreed measures. There are still some actions that require POCL
to complete which will fully close Al218. Pathways last commitment was to
submit the trainer evaluation report. This was achieved week ending 19"
November and will be reviewed on the 22" November.
The pilot of the Pre-Entry event took place on 9/11/99 and was well received by
POCL delegates and Training representatives. A process for identifying and
inviting delegates to attend the Pre-Entry event will soon be confirmed by
POCL.
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24 November 1999
2.5 Implementation Statistics (To 12" November 1999)
Activity
INFRASTRUCTURE
PROG.
IRGM letters issued
Site surveys undertaken
Site re-surveys required
Site re-surveys undertaken
iSite modifications done
Site preparations done
Sites RFI
INSTALLATION PROG.
IRGM Phase 2 Letters Issued
ISDN lines installed
Sites installed
Offices live
‘Counters Live
Implementation Weekly Statistics
Previous report Actual this Cumulative
total period
17440 123 17563
16564 153 16717
6472 40 6512
6144 210 6354
4334 210 4544
9572 415 9987
8894 406 9300
2570 868 3438
1903 18 1921
1608 256 1864
1596 260 1856
3568 528 4096
Comments
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ICL Pathway Progress Summary
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24 November 1999
3. CUSTOMER SERVICE
3.1 Infrastructure Services
3.1.1.1 Strategic Services Unit
3.1.1.2 Horizon Service Helpdesk
1. The weekly results to date for the Al408 monitoring period are given below.
Service Level
Target Week Commencing
25/10
[Level 1 I< 5 minutes
I< 10 minutes
Level 2 <30
minutes
95%
<45
minutes
100%
Calls answered within 20
seconds
68.6%
(Cash Account [Ring backs
Icalls
48% 1.5%
Repeat Calls
Call scripts
compliance
2. Footnotes to the Table
a) The application of incorrect Reference Data and moving of an icon
before informing Postmasters caused more than 300 additional calls on one
day (Thursday). This resulted in lines being engaged and had a significant
impact on the calls answered with 20 seconds (40%). A typical Thursday
figure is over 80%.
b) ICL Pathway and POCL audited the same set of Cash Account calls.
ICL Pathway reported 70% conformance and POCL reported 24%
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conformance. Further investigation showed that this was an unreliable
method of audit. A revised method of audit has been proposed to POCL.
3. HSH are still missing some SLAs. SSU have scheduled to meet with the
OSD Service Manager and HSH Operations Manager on Thursday this week
to agree a plan to address and propose improvement in the areas of
concern.
4. POCL have escalated a concern to the Service Management review forum
that an incident at Dungannon PO should have been immediately escalated
as a problem, because of its potential business impact. As a result ICL and
POCL are working together to review the problem management process to
ensure that incidents which may potentially have a high business impact are
escalated to problem status immediately.
5. At the end of roll out, 1859 outlets are installed with 3 still to migrate.
6. The processes established in support of roll out proved to be very successful
and any issues that did arise were quickly and efficiently resolved.
3.1.1.3 Outlet Change
1. Summary of Change Requests From Mar 99 to-date (including WIP to
Jan0oo)
(Change Type Status IVolume
(Openings 2 pending 3 (Including I reopening)
1 awaiting FAD code
change
\Closures 11 complete 12 (Including 2 Temporary
1 wip Closures)
[Relocations 4 complete 4
[Refurbishment 5 complete 6
1 WIP
\Counter Increase 1 complete 2
1 WIP.
(Total 27
2. The following changes are ongoing.
Location Reason for Change Date of Change
[Ravenscliffe ‘Screen 2000 Refurbishment IScheduled to take place 19th
lovember 99. Note there is major
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3.1.2
[building works at this outlet.
[Powburn [Reopen following permanentIThis change is currently back with
closure IPOCL. We are unable to re-use a
IFAD code for an outlet that has beenI
reviously closed.
Sandy [Long Term Temporary IThis Outlet is now due to Reopen on
(Closure \Tues 16th November 99. Health
\checks have been done on the system!
and the system is OK.
orth Walsham _ [Increase In counters [Increase in Counters from 5 to 6
positions. No definite confirmed.
\date. Awaiting OBC21 Scheduled
an 2000
(Moreton Hall (Open outlet ew outlets should come in via
Rollout. Need to advise POCL on
onda:
‘Somers Town (Open Outlet \As above
[Four Roads (Wales) IPossible Permanent Closure IThe Postmistress has been taken ill.
\This outlet is in her house. Still
awaiting an OBC20 for this change.
Management Support Unit
3.1.2.1 Management Information
1. As part of Al298, MSU are continuing to work jointly with POCL to analyse
HSH calls relating to systems instability. Call volumes and categorisations
have been agreed for the main monitoring period against 782 offices, which
commenced on 21/10/99 for four weeks. The NT (Blue Screen) incidents
are at present, and subject to discussion with POCL, considered to be within
Al298.
2. MSU are continuing to prove that data supplied by SLAM is accurate. A
PinICL raised on a query over APS File Delivery SLAs is ongoing.
3.1.2.2 Business / Reconciliation Incident Management
There are currently 112 PinICLs assigned to MSU. A large number of these
incidents were due to the 'non-polling' of live Outlets, although many of these have
now been cleared. It has now been agreed with POCL, that MSU will raise
incidents on offices that have not polled for 2 or more days, or on those offices
that have not polled for 1 day but then reappear on the report within a given 7 day
period.
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24" November 1999
3.4 Operations Services
3.4.1 Service Availability
3.4.1.1
3.4.1.2
Systems Operations
Correspondence Servers
Primary Correspondence Servers 1 and 2 in Bootle both experienced a ‘Blue
Screen’ failure at separate times during the last week. In both cases the live
service successfully failed over to the secondary server. Both primary servers were
successfully re-booted and brought back into live service. A fix has been identified
and is currently being tested.
Audit Server
The Audit Server at Wigan is now working to schedule with the inter-campus link
and exchange of files working correctly.
Networks
Following the Energis switch failure on 29" October, various meetings have
focussed on different elements of the failure and initiated actions to prevent
recurrence. There have been no incidents of this type or any other failure on the
Energis network during the last week.
3.4.2 SLA Management
3.4.2.1 APS
1.
3.4.2.2
1.
POCL OSG has agreed that they will no longer raise Incidents for
transactions that break SLA delivery timescales. This process requires
protracted investigation by SSC as no FAD codes can be supplied. The Non-
Polled Office report now provides Incidents to cover these so the duplicated
effort is now confirmed as obsolete.
There are concerns about the time that it takes to close down Incidents
raised on the Non-Polled Office report. In some cases Postmasters can take
24 hours or more to do a reboot when requested. This means the offices
remain on the reports and break SLA delivery deadlines, but without
indication that the slowness is due to the outlets. Pathway and POCL BSM
are currently discussing how to minimise this situation.
CTO
Resubmission of the CR for the new Token Verification Service is still
awaited. In the meantime it has been agreed that work will proceed under
the current OLA and process documentation.
OSG have been requested to obtain the offending Eastern Energy tokens
so that Pathway can test the tokens to identify the root cause of the
problem.
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24" November 1999
3. A letter has been sent to OSG outlining the charging structure for the
additional CTO schedule cycles requested by POCL. POCL have already
agreed the plan for the introduction of the January 2000 schedule but a
response on the charging structure is still awaited.
4. POCL dispute the charges Pathway has submitted against V1.06 of the
POCL AP Client List. They have a different calculation of the numbers of
tokens. Pathway is concerned because the V1.06 list was submitted by
POCL under the CR process. An investigation is underway to see how
POCL calculated the difference.
3.4.2.3 AP Client Migration
1. A new version of the Strategy document is out for review through the CP
process. Obsolete plans have been removed from the document.
2. Dependencies on POCL and milestones that they must meet are now on a
plan, which is to be presented to POCL for review, before inclusion in the
Programme Level 1 plan.
3. Although Pathway has completed a few presentation visits to AP Clients,
POCL has submitted no dates to Pathway for the remainder. This is still the
most crucial deadline to meet in order that there are no other knock-on
effects to the planned dates.
3.4.2.4 TIP
Comments on the OLA from TIP Chesterfield are still awaited. (2 weeks).
2. There is still no progress from POCL on the specification of their Disaster
Recovery (DR) interim contingency requirements, or their proposals for the
long term DR solution.
3. A TIP operational review meeting has been arranged for 30/11/99.
3.4.3 Change Management
3.4.3.1 Reference Data
1. A fresh baseline and increment of data for SIP16 implementation have now
been received from POCL and are in testing. Current indications are that the
implementation may still be able to go live on the planned date but
intermediate activities have had to be replanned.
2. A total of 146 reference data changes were released to the live estate last
week, 234 since the last checkpoint report. In the last two weeks the total
number of correction files were 30 (approx. 10%) and 55 migration special
files (approx. 20%). A meeting was held recently with Network Change
Authorisers (NCAs) where they gained a clearer understanding of their role
in the authorisation of Outlet changes. Although the number of pending
changes still remains high at present Pathway are confident that the problem
is now under control.
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3. A meeting was held on 16" November to discuss ways of improving the
quality of POCL data and other end-to-end Reference Data issues.
Agreement was reached on ways to progress the issues. Issues in this area
are receiving high visibility within both Pathway and POCL. Following
discussions at this meeting, Pathway will be reviewing the Interface
Agreement and will re-present it to POCL when the review is complete.
4. The total number of POCL PinlCLs was standing at 21 on 12" November.
There are a further 12 outstanding on CSR+ Reference Data.
5. The corrective actions to remove the problem of RDMC loading new data
when earlier versions are being verified/released are progressing well. The
short-term measure of providing a report for the Reference Data Team to
use has now been implemented. The longer-term solution is currently being
progressed through Pathway with planned implementation before National
Rollout restarts.
3.4.3.2 Software Distribution
1. Software distribution effort is now geared to reducing the tail of outstanding
Counters in preparation for the distribution of SIP16. The Data Centre was
successfully updated with the SIP 16 code over the weekend 13/14"
November. There are some problems encountered with software distribution
where rebooting the system provides the only tactical solution. A programme
of planned reboots is being executed to resolve these problems. Difficulties
have been encountered in agreeing suitable times for these reboots with the
affected Postmasters.
2. 22 Release Notes have been raised and 15 Release Notes were authorised
to live.
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24" November 1999
Actions from Delivery Meeting - Wednesday 10th November 1999
ACTION
DESCRIPTION
5101
John Dicks to provide the Training Quality Assessment to
Douglas Craik prior to the next Delivery Meeting.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
This report has been prepared by KnowledgePool and will
have been published to POCL on 22/11.
Action closed.
5102
John Dicks to report back on the findings of Pathway
Development on the electronic scales / OBCS problem.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
A problem has been found in relation to automatic scales
and is in course of rectification. (The problem was
reported as associated with manual scales, which operate a
correct sequence, and this caused a delay in identifying the
issue.)
Action closed.
5103
John Dicks to consider the production of a separate
document to address detailed issues raised at the second
HLD development workshop.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the Delivery Meeting.
Carried forward.
5104
John Dicks to consider providing visibility of the design
document to the Horizon Programme.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
The design document in question is a proprietary
design document and will not be published outside ICL
Pathway. A letter including this statement has been
sent to the POCL representative.
Action closed.
5106
John Dicks to provide comment on deficiencies identified
by John Meagher in the Pathway solution on mobile
counter configurations.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
Pathway has received comments only from Bob Booth.
These will be responded to subsequent to 23/11. A
further update will be provided at the Delivery Meeting.
Carried forward.
5107
John Dicks to ensure that Pathway provide an assessment
of the impact on roll out of alternative options to address
the non-availability of ISDN.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the Delivery Meeting.
Carried forward.
5108
Steve Muchow to provide details of the Energis problem
that affected call answering times to Andy Radka.
SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5110
Steve Muchow to ensure that minutes of the joint meeting
between Horizon and Pathway to address reference data
issues were issued quickly.
SM
17 Nov
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STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5111
Chris French and Steve Muchow to ensure close and rapid
working on the production of a joint solution to the
reference data issues, and to report back to the next
Delivery Meeting.
CF/ SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5112
John Meagher to agree Terms of Reference for the end to
end review of data management with Steve Muchow, and
issue them.
JM/SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5114
John Dicks to clarify any instances of Horizon non-
compliance with the Reference Data AIS.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
A briefing paper was published 17/11. All significant
individual instances are recorded in PinlCLs and these
are mailed to POCL for action. The current list of
unresolved PinICLs with POCL will be provided to
POCL in hard copy at the Reference Data meeting now
scheduled for 25/11.
Action closed.
5115
John Dicks to ensure that a response was provided to Bob
Booth’s letter on the Energis switch problem was provided
by the meeting scheduled for 17 November.
JD
17 Nov
STATUS
The method of assessment that Bob Booth described in
his letter of 8/11 was adopted for the subsequent
weekly reports.
Action closed.
5116
John Dicks to review the impact on Al376/3 criteria results
if Pathway took credit for the retrospective analysis of
problems that had already been resolved.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
Of the six applicable incident reports two were so
affected.
Action closed.
5117
John Dicks to provide a summary of cash account
discrepancies to meet the requirements of Al376/4.
JD
17 Nov
STATUS
This was provided to John Meagher and Min Burdett on
18/11. There are no new cause Cash Account
Discrepancies that would not be identified by the
Accounting Integrity Control Release.
Action closed.
5119
Steve Muchow to provide details of ring backs prompted by
the outlet for discussion with Dave McLaughlin.
SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5121
Steve Muchow to review the results of call script
compliance audits with Andy Radka.
SM/AR
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5122
John Meagher to discuss the provision of suitable evidence
for the delivery of Al408/6 with John Dicks.
JM/JD
24 Nov
STATUS
It was agreed that concrete evidence for such an
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abstract criterion was not possible.
Action closed.
5124
Steve Muchow and Andy Radka to discuss mechanisms to
facilitate understanding of the ease of introduction of
system improvements.
SM/AR
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5125
Andy Radka to raise specific issues with helpdesk and
problem management with Steve Muchow to agree an
acceptable joint approach.
AR/SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5126
John Dicks to confirm that a NINO file is being built to
support the operation of OBCS.
JD
24 Nov
STATUS
Confirmed - provided that outlets are implementing the
instruction : New Horizon Offices Temporary process
for scanning bar-coded order books.
Action closed.
5127
Steve Muchow to produce a model of the impacts of an
order book backlog on OBCS.
SM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
5128
Steve Muchow and Naresh Mohindra to arrange a meeting
to address any systems problems liable to arise from the
introduction of SIP16.
SM/NM
24 Nov
STATUS
An update will be provided at the meeting.
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