Guest Blog written by Mike Current, Upgrade Specialist – OnBase at DataBank IMX
Life gets a little strange when a home improvement project is winding down.
You’ve actually started getting used to the dust, your ears have tuned out the familiar sound of power tools, and you’re able to nimbly wander your home (aka construction zone) like a professional hard hat. It feels like the project has just begun, while simultaneously feeling like your home has always been in a constant state of remodeling.
Life during an upgrade of your OnBase solution can feel the same. After a while, the cadence of project meetings, testing, and issue tracking becomes a sort of rhythm.
After getting into this “upgrade groove”, it’s easy to settle into a false sense of security. If you’re not careful, you can let your guard down and forget the purpose of the project, which can make the difference between a successful OnBase upgrade and a project you won’t want to look back on.
The purpose of an OnBase upgrade project is for the OnBase solution to be updated to a current version, and to ensure that no business functionality, process, or continuity is lost.
Sometimes the temptation to ignore best practices and coast to the project finish line proves to be too much. Don’t let that happen to you!
Don’t forget the importance of testing.
When an upgrade project begins, a good OnBase Admin will always have the best intentions for the scope of their testing.
They went through the checklist. Test plan? Check. Test cases? Check. End-user testing? Check! But as time goes on, it’s easy for one to become distracted with solution support, or to unwittingly lower one’s guard.
Testing a solution is a war of attrition, and it’s fought on many fronts. Hold tight to your commitment to testing. Help reinforce the value of testing to your business users. Resolve your focus to finishing your test plan, and not just going through the motions.
Download this worksheet as a guide to make sure you’re on track.
Don’t forget the “little things”.
During an OnBase upgrade, there’s so much focus on the big stuff – testing, timelines, server rollouts – that it would be easy to miss some smaller, but equally important details like:
- Uncommon business processes – don’t forget to account for end-of-month/quarter/year processes
- Keeping Communication open with your IT department- you can spend a lot of time troubleshooting down the wrong path if you don’t have any insight on other IT projects
- End-user rollout planning – using Active X? Unity Client? Do your users have the permissions they need to get the latest client? Don’t wait until the last minute to plan your client rollouts.
Don’t be left in the dust.
An upgrade project is a marathon, not a sprint. Diligent testing and attention to detail will help you successfully wind down your OnBase upgrade with purpose.
Next stop: wrapping things up!
5 reasons to upgrade | Planning for an upgrade | What to expect in an upgrade | Keeping It in Check During the Final Stages | Wrapping up your upgrade
