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A Guide on PeopleSoft Upgrade
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Page 1
The Upgrade Planning Guide for PeopleSoft 9.2
© Copyright 2013
DMT Solutions, Inc.
www.PeopleSoftCareer.com
Page 2
The Upgrade Planning Guide for PeopleSoft 9.2
© Copyright 2013
Copyright © 2013
Printed in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no
part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
publisher. The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not
represent the views of any other party or parties.
PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, PeopleCode, PeopleBooks and nVision are registered trademarks of
Oracle / PeopleSoft Inc. This book is an independent creation of the author and has been
published without license, authorization or participation of ORACLE.
Information contained in this work had been obtained from sources believed to be reliable.
However, neither DMT SOLUTIONS, INC. nor the author guarantee the accuracy or
completeness of any information published herein and shall not be responsible for any
errors, omissions, or damage arising from the use of this publication. This work is published
with the understanding that DMT Solutions, Inc. and its authors are supplying information
but are not attempting to render engineering or other professional services. If such services
are required, the assistance of an appropriate professional should be sought.
You are permitted to print one copy of this eBook for yourself. It is illegal to distribute or
copy this book in any part.
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The Upgrade Planning Guide for PeopleSoft 9.2
© Copyright 2013
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Acquire all Pertinent Upgrade Information ............................................................................................................................ 5
Training for your team .................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Determining Business Requirements & Critical Success Factors .................................................................................. 8
Retire those Customizations .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Thou Shalt Know Thy Customizations .............................................................................................................................. 10
Define Your Upgrade Plan ............................................................................................................................................................ 11
Technical Planning .................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Planning Your Project Team Requirements .................................................................................................................... 12
Create Your Project Plan ......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Defining Your Test Strategy ........................................................................................................................................................ 13
Why Test? ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Put Together a Testing Strategy ........................................................................................................................................... 13
Testing Requirements .............................................................................................................................................................. 13
Define Your Testing Strategy ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Unit Testing .................................................................................................................................................................................. 14
System Testing ............................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Integration Testing .................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Parallel Testing ........................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Performance Testing ................................................................................................................................................................ 15
User Acceptance Testing ......................................................................................................................................................... 15
Regression Testing .................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 16
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The Upgrade Planning Guide for PeopleSoft 9.2
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INTRODUCTION
This Planning guide was written primarily for upgrade managers; however, this document will
benefit any project team member in a technical or functional role. The purpose of this guide is to
provide you with information that will assist you in getting started planning for your upgrade and
installing the new release.
A PeopleSoft upgrade is no minor feat. There is a lot of planning and decision making that must go
into the upgrade process. Does my current hardware meet the minimum requirements? Do I need
to upgrade my O/S? How about my Database Software? Also, there are many other factors to
consider like what people will be involved? What testing strategy will be used? What kind of training
is needed and how many people need to go? The bottom line is that planning is the essential Key to
a successful upgrade. There are several planning tasks that are necessary for a successful upgrade.
Be sure you have an adequate plan and task outline completed before you start your upgrade
project. These plans and task outlines will help you in assessing your business requirements,
technical requirements, implementation/upgrade team requirements, and in defining other project
considerations. From a high level, here are the major planning activities that need to be performed.
1. Acquire all pertinent upgrade information and materials
2. Training for your team
3. Determining Business Requirements
4. Producing a Fit Gap Analysis
5. Layout your technical requirements
6. Define the upgrade plan
7. Define and layout your testing Strategy
8. Make sure you fully understand the process
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Once your organization had made the decision to upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2, you will need to
choose your upgrade path. This can easily be done by comparing your current version of the
application with the certified upgrade paths defined by PeopleSoft. Depending on how old your
release is, you may find that you need to make your upgrade a multi-version upgrade. With this out
of the way you are ready to obtain the necessary information.
ACQUIRE ALL PERTINENT UPGRADE INFORMATION
The very first step to successful information gathering is a visit to Oracle Support's PeopleSoft
Upgrade Section. This section will supply all of the necessary information and notices for each
release. This is also where you will find the certified upgrade path for your release.
You will need an Oracle Support account to access these documents.
Release Value Proposition
Prerelease Notes
Next you will download the upgrade documentation for your upgrade path. This document will
contain all of the necessary steps for performing your upgrade. You will need to review this
document to find specific instructions for planning your upgrade.
Updates & Fixes seem to be another crucial step. Pay particular attention to any upgrades and fixes
that are labeled as "Required for Install", or "Required for Upgrade." Skipping one of these required
updates or fixes could result in an upgrade disaster.
PeopleSoft upgrade’s uses the Change Assistant application to organize and automate the upgrade
tasks. This application is template driven containing the pertinent steps for your upgrade process
and ensuring that you run them in the specific order as instructed by PeopleSoft. These templates
execute set scripts and application engine programs that will be used to convert your data.
Download the latest release of the Change Assistant and the associated scripts and programs. Be
sure to also download the UPGCONVERT project that will be later loaded into your PeopleSoft
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Application Designer.
Note: In version 8.52 PeopleSoft has introduced the Update Manager to make this easier for you.
The PeopleSoft Update Manager provides is supposed to help you reduce time, effort, and cost of
application maintenance. The way it works is that PeopleSoft will deliver the most current
PeopleSoft applications code and objects in the form of a PeopleSoft Update Image on a Virtual
Machine on a regular basis. Then the PeopleSoft Update Manager will use tools like the Change
Assistant and Change Packager and give you an easy way to select what you want to patch to your
environment. The benefits of this are:
Your environment does not have to be current on maintenance.
You can select a single fix and have the system automatically find the needed prerequisites
to go with that fix.
You can “get current” on fixes by having the system generate a custom change package that
suits the current state of your environment.
Now that you have downloaded and reviewed the pertinent information and materials for your
upgrade, be sure to review them, and then review them, and then review them again. If you think I
just repeated myself I did, for a very good reason. Project managers, and technical team leads must
know the upgrade process before starting it. In addition to this information, it is an excellent idea to
download and study all PeopleSoft whitepapers on the new features of the version you are
upgrading to.
Other Resources and Links to stay informed are:
Applications Strategy Blog
Legislative Updates Blog
PeopleTools and Technology Blog
YouTube
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Now that you understand that the first step in this upgrade process is to make sure that you are well
educated. The next step will be to ensure the proper education and training of your Upgrade team.
This will include the education of the Upgrade process and the required training to help your team
be successful in upgrading.
TRAINING FOR YOUR TEAM
Next, I would like to make mention of another crucial step in the upgrade process. This step has to
deal with Training Your Team. Your PeopleSoft upgrade project team members will require training
at one level or another. Furthermore, these team members are the key to a fast and smooth
upgrade, so you want to make sure they get the proper knowledge and skills necessary to upgrade
successfully.
Your team members will need the more training than anyone else and it is crucial that they get it
early in the project planning and deployment process and not during the upgrade. So where do you
start to find the right training for you or your team? You can start with the Oracle Support website
or you can visit Oracle University to schedule formal training.
In addition you can find a great series of overview videos on the latest 9.2 features on Oracle's You
Tube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/PSFTOracle?feature=mhee and the PeopleSoft
Information Portal - http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/054275.html
Oracle / PeopleSoft has designed a road map for the specific training your team members will need.
They have several guides to training courses that are designed to easily let you see what training is
needed for a specific role. These guides contain a list of the most common roles in your upgrade
project team and the training courses that would best develop the skills required for that role.
Remember, if you want to upgrade to the latest release of PeopleSoft 9.2 successfully, you want to
make sure that your Upgrade team is adequately trained to ensure a smooth upgrade. Failure for
your team to understand what they are doing will result in a loss in time, production and money. All
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things you can't afford on an upgrade project.
DETERMINING BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS & CRITICAL SUCCESS
FACTORS
Do you know what the Critical Success Factors (CSF) are for your upgrade? Why are you upgrading in
the first place? I know many of you will say "because we have to or we will lose support," but I'm
sure that some of you are upgrading for other business reasons. In addition to this, Oracle has
extended the 9.0 support through June of 2015.
Perhaps you want to reduce costs, or implement new Talent Management functionality or Self
Service features. Perhaps you want to extend you application to your customers, suppliers, and
partners. Or, maybe you want to implement employee and manager self-service and save big on HR
and Payroll administrative costs. Whatever the business reason, it is crucial that you know your CSF
and the associated risk factors. By doing so, you will be able to manage your entire upgrade project
like a Pro!
One of the first ways that you can define your business requirements is to establish your upgrade
budget and know it before you start. Next is to make a timeline for your implementation listing your
CSF's and your milestones. Finally, establishing the scope of your project is also crucial in ensuring
you are successful. All of these are necessary steps in determining your Business Requirements.
Defining the scope of your upgrade project is important so that your team and members outside of
your team understand what you are doing and stay within the confines of that scope. For example,
be sure to list the number of team members, how much technical and functional analysis is
involved, how many databases you will use and the name & function of each. Other factors to
consider in your scope are, knowing the scope of training your end users and managers, knowing
how much testing and what level will be done, listing any new customizations that you will add
during the upgrade, documenting the new features and modules that you will be taking advantage
of in the new release. Are you getting the idea of what a scope is?
Next, let’s talk money and budget! Face it! You can't just do what you want, take how long you
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want, and bring in 1,000 consultants to do the job! If you've been involved in the PeopleSoft world
long enough then you know that it used to be that way in the 90's. However, those days are long
gone and you need to ensure that you stay within a budget and get a return on your investment of
upgrading to PeopleSoft 9.2. After all, the bean counters in your company have limited the amount
of money you can spend by approving a budget, especially in this economy!
What? You haven't created a budget yet?
You better start now and get going, because you may have to acquire new hardware, software,
outside resources, training etc. It is essential to identify these items and create a budget for your
project. Doing so, will help you to better plan and manage your project so you won't have to stop in
the middle of the project to get approval to by another server or piece of software.
Lastly, make sure you create a project timeline that shows your start date, end date, and major
milestones. Be sure to treat your upgrade the same way you would treat any corporate initiative or
project. For most companies, the average time to upgrade to HCM 9.2 will take approximately 3 to
4 months and 3 to 6 months for Financials. However, if you have a lot of customizations, and you
are planning on adding new functionality, you can add a few more months. Some upgrade projects
that include the addition of new modules take as long as a year. Make sure that you list target dates
and milestones and associate your CSF's where applicable.
All of these guidelines and tasks are extremely important in identifying your Business Requirements
to ensure a successful upgrade. And even more importantly, you will be successful!
Producing a Fit Gap Analysis
So far, we have discussed the various requirements and information gathering stages. Here is where
we start to roll up our sleeves and do some analysis against our current version of the application
and the new release of the application. This is called a Business Fit Gap Analysis.
Got Customizations?
Well if you have a lot of customizations and you are embarking upon an upgrade from an earlier
release, this task will be very important. You will start by looking at the release note and comparing
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them to your current customizations. In doing so, you will find the various fits and gaps between
your customizations and the new features and changes you found in the release notes. Take your
time to carefully identify all of your customizations and compare the current release functionality
with the new functionality in the new version. Oracle provides a release comparison HCM
Cumulative Feature Overview Tool which will compare your current release with the new one and
give you all of the new features.
RETIRE THOSE CUSTOMIZATIONS
Now, this is what you either love or hate to do, but it will work to your advantage, for years to
come, if you do it right. During this step is where you get to make all kinds of decisions on whether
to dump or keep your customizations. Why would you want to dump them? Because, if you find that
your customization has been replaced with a delivered functionality or component, you will want to
keep the delivered and dump your customization to save you countless hours in maintenance and
upgrades, both now and in the future. To Re-Customize or Not to Re-Customize??
You should identify as many opportunities as you can, to retire those high-maintenance
customizations and accept the new delivered functionality that replaces them. While doing this,
make sure that you examine both the online and batch components that you have customized. For
Batch reporting, look at your reports, interfaces, and batch programs that you customized for your
business needs. For online components, look at pages, PeopleCode, records, menus, fields, etc. to
determine the differences in your customizations and your new release.
THOU SHALT KNOW THY CUSTOMIZATIONS
Most importantly, be certain that you know your customizations like the back of your hand. If you
have done it right, then you will already have the documentation for all of your customizations. If
not, well then get busy! You need to know your customizations to perform a successful fit gap
analysis. So, Know Thy Customizations!
Finally, if you can, try to obtain the same project team members for your upgrade that you used in
your implementation and throughout the lifecycle of your installation. This can save you a countless
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number of hours during your upgrade. In our next article we will discuss the planning of your
technical requirements.
DEFINE YOUR UPGRADE PLAN
So far, we have discussed the various requirements and information gathering stages, we have also
discussed the Business Fit Gap Analysis of our current version of the application and the new release
of the application. Now we will discuss Planning, Planning, and Planning. Did I mention Planning?
Now that you have gathered this enormous amount of information and performed your business fit
gap analysis, you should be knowledgeable and prepared enough to start planning and putting
together your Project plans. There are really 3 steps of planning that we need to highlight. First, you
need to perform Technical planning. This will include planning for your technical requirements and
performing a Technical Fit Gap analysis. Second, you need to plan your project team requirements,
identifying key personnel and resources. Finally, you will create your detailed project plan. We have
even included a sample project plan for you to use.
TECHNICAL PLANNING
In order to efficiently perform your upgrade as smoothly as possible, you need to perform a review
and analysis of your current hardware and software components that make up your current
PeopleSoft application. You should document this information in a spreadsheet or other format and
then compare this information with new release Hardware and Software requirements. This is the
information you downloaded in an earlier step. Once you perform this comparison you will be able
to see the Gaps in your technical environment and discover what needs to be aqcuired to meet the
new requirements.
Now, here is some important information for capacity planning. When you perform an upgrade you
will need a vast amount of file and database disk space for holding multiple copies of your database.
Therefore, be sure to plan for at least three times the size of your current production database with
room for several backups of these databases. Furthermore you will require about twice the amount
of File Server space that you utilize in production today. And, it is most important that your upgrade
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server have the appropriate processing power, memory, and that it is properly configured for a large
amount of batch processing.
PLANNING YOUR PROJECT TEAM REQUIREMENTS
If you have ever performed a PeopleSoft upgrade or implementation, then you know that it requires
key personnel and resources to make necessary business decisions and to be able to identify
customizations and other business requirements. So you will need to identify these Key resources
and create a resource plan accordingly. If you have the members of your implementation still on
hand, make sure you target these individuals as the key members of your project team. Their
knowledge is extremely valuable. Make sure that you clearly define their roles and determine the
amount of time they will be able to commit to the upgrade project. Your project will need a Project
Manager, Technical Upgrade Specialist, Installer, DBA, Network Admin, System Admin, Developer,
and Functional Resources. Once you identify each of these key role players, create a resource plan
that documents their roles, their skills, any external assistance you need, and any additional training
that is required for these team members.
After the resource plan is completed, you can start to establish your working upgrade environment
for your team. This will include workstations, phones, email groups, supplies, dedicated shared file
directories, and anything that is needed for the team to be successful. Finally, make sure you
identify and establish standards for your upgrade project. These standards will ensure that your
team works with documentation, issue management, communication, documentation of issues, and
change control procedures.
CREATE YOUR PROJECT PLAN
Now that you have identified and documented your gap fit analysis, key team members, roles,
resources, technical requirements, and standards you are ready to create a detailed project plan
that is specific to your environment. The best way to do this is to utilize your documentation of the
business fit gap analysis, the technical fit gap analysis, and the Upgrade instructions. This will allow
you to create an outline of the detailed tasks that are required to execute the upgrade. You will also
need to include testing and end user training in this process.
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DEFINING YOUR TEST STRATEGY
Although, you will not be performing the testing until a later time in your upgrade project, you will
need to define the testing strategy before the project begins or soon after. Your testing strategy will
provide the basis for understanding how you will test your newly upgraded applications. There are
several points within the technical upgrade process where your developers will unit test programs,
but the majority of testing will occur after your application has been upgraded. Therefore, it is
crucial to develop a plan, early in the project, for the testing strategies that you will perform.
WHY TEST? Testing your database after you have completed the upgrade ensures that you can still operate your
day-to-day processes on your newly upgraded release of your application. Therefore, your testing
strategy should be based on these day-to-day processes and you should involve the users and
functional leads that perform these processes. But first, let’s talk strategy!
PUT TOGETHER A TESTING STRATEGY An effective testing strategy will require that you have a pretty solid understanding of the different
stages of a PeopleSoft Upgrade. There are certain key stop-points or stages where certain testing
should be performed. It is extremely important to know where these stages are, and when the
testing should be performed. The project manager and upgrade specialist should identify these
stages.
Some of the stages will include testing the integrity of the data and meta-data structures within the
PeopleSoft applications, specifically after upgrading PeopleTools and also when copying upgrade
projects from your demo database to your copy of production. These steps are outlined in the
upgrade instructions and usually include running and reviewing your DDDAUDIT and SYSAUDIT
reports from your copy of production. You will verify that the system is working properly by
reviewing the system online. After you are comfortable that the system is working properly, you can
perform the Test Move to Production.
TESTING REQUIREMENTS
There is more than one approach and method you can take for testing your upgrade and you should
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evaluate your requirements by gathering key information about your applications and environment.
Here are some basic questions to ask:
How many products and modules do you currently have in your production database?
How many customizations you have in your production database?
What you need to test?
DEFINE YOUR TESTING STRATEGY
Once you have evaluated your testing requirements, you will determine the type of testing you
need. Use the testing type definitions below, defined from the PeopleSoft upgrade instructions, to
determine the levels of testing required for your applications in your organization. Sometimes,
certain organizations may not require all testing stages listed. Every organization will develop their
testing strategy slightly differently from others, as each organization is unique.
The testing types below do not necessarily run systematically, one after another. Different test
conditions can sometimes run in parallel. Review the following testing types. Define what you will
need for each testing type.
UNIT TESTING
In this stage of testing, you have completed your upgrade tasks. Your database is now at the new
release level. However, you will want to unit test before you use the new system. You will test your
logon process. In addition, you will test to ensure that you can access existing data and enter new
data successfully.
During this phase you will test individual transactions and processes of your application. In addition,
you will be testing customizations, and verifying access to data and pages. There is no need for
testing scripts in this phase.
SYSTEM TESTING
This stage of testing ensures that all your functionality works together. In addition, the test
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eliminates conflicts with old and new customizations. In this phase, you will use a full functioning
and separate testing environment to test all business processes, interfaces, batch programs,
security, reports, and customizations. This phase will require testing scripts to follow and record the
results. You should not move on to the next phase unless this is successful.
INTEGRATION TESTING
In this stage, you will test to ensure that your business processes work as designed. In addition, you
will ensure that any design flaws are resolved before User Acceptance Testing. This stage is optional
but is very useful in that you can perform a test move to production that creates a new
environment. Then, you can test all of the integration points between modules, and external
applications.
PARALLEL TESTING
This stage of testing is optional and is mostly used for those customers with extensive Payroll
customizations and setup. During the upgrade, you would be performing parallel tests throughout
all testing stages to ensure that your upgrade was successful.
PERFORMANCE TESTING
This stage of testing measures your current system performance against the new release level
performance. You’ll want to monitor the performance during this phase and even perform load
testing, if necessary.
USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING
In this stage of testing, you validate your data, business rules, and business processes requirements.
You will also define the acceptance criteria for your upgrade. This is where your end users and
business process owners will run through all of the test scripts and execute key business processes
such as hiring, terminating, paying, etc. This phase should require testing scripts and an issue
resolution process to resolve any open issues.
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REGRESSION TESTING
This stage of testing validates the test move to production and move to production parts of the
upgrade.
You have now finished developing your testing strategy and you should document this information
thoroughly, because you will use it later in the upgrade process when you complete the upgrade of
your copy of production.
CONCLUSION
This upgrade planning guide should give you enough information to start planning, training and
putting together a solid project plan, testing strategy, and testing plan for a successful upgrade. We
covered the following topics.
1. Acquire all pertinent upgrade information and materials
2. Training for your team
3. Determining Business Requirements
4. Producing a Fit Gap Analysis
5. Layout your technical requirements
6. Define the upgrade plan
7. Define and layout your testing Strategy
8. Make sure you fully understand the process
I hope this guide was useful to you. If you would like to provide me with your feedback and/or
provide me with a suggestion of other topics you would like me to create, please send me your
feedback at http://dmtsolutions.zendesk.com