Complex Upgrade: Learn 8.0 to 9.1

Allison CalderonIT Project ManagerFairfax County Public Schools

Who is Fairfax County?

• Located in Northeast Virginia

• 400 square miles

• Primarily suburban/urban

• 194 schools and centers with an additional 48 alternative instruction programs

• 177,000 students

• 35,950 employees (92% school-based)

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Who are our users?

• All employees and students have accounts

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40,000

177,000

70,000

Staff

Students

Parents

How does FCPS use Blackboard?

• A course site is created for each classroom.

• Approximately 40,000 courses are created each year.

• Teachers follow FCPS regulation and make courses available to students and parents in September, typically on back-to-school night.

• Student enrollment/removes/drops are done nightly with SIS feeds.

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Course Sites

• Course sites support each classroom teacher (multiple sites for middle and high school teachers)

• High School Online Campus programs year round

• Professional organizations

• Professional development

• Leadership committees/working groups

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Additional Uses

• Blackboard is also a portal entry point for other systems• Naviance (middle and high school)

• Provides support for career, course planning, goal setting and college research

• eCART• Horizon online testing application

• Resource search

• WeCARE• Emergency online forms

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Blackboard products

• Blackboard Learn

• Managed Hosting

• Pre-production/Disaster Recovery site

• Complex Hosting Manager (100%)

• Testing environment

• Customization and customization support (ICM)

• Blackboard Collaborate (Web conferencing & Voice tools)

• Blackboard Content System

• Blackboard Student Services

• Blackboard Connect

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Customizations

• Parent Portal – allows for parent registration, linking to students and validation at local school site

• eCART – resource search and links to assessment application

• School leader – gives administrators view into all course sites for building

• Strong password and force password change

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FCPS eCARTFCPS eCART

Curriculum Repository

FC PS deve loped

and ow ned

Curriculum Repository

FCPS developed and owned

• Curriculum• Resources• Assessments• Assessment Items

EDSL eCART Reporting Application

FC PS deve loped

and ow ned

EDSL eCART Reporting Application

FCPS developed and owned

• Information Dashboard • Cluster, IS, School

Leader and Teacher Reports• Standard • Custom

• Results Tracking• Point in Time• Longitudinal

• Teacher Access• Anytime, Anywhere • Secure Single Point-of-Entry• Role-based User Access• Search tool for: • Curriculum• Resources

• Assessment Tool and Results

The one-stop shop for curriculum, resources, and assessments through a single web-based point-of-entry via FCPS 24-7 Learning

Resources

Resources

FCPS 24-7 Learning(Blackboard)

Assessments

Horizon (Northrop

Grumman)

Assessments

Horizon (Northrop

Grumman)

Project Life-Cycle

Planning

Proposes broad project concept (what):• IDs possible project

stakeholders• Defines desired

outcomes• Discusses gen approach• Defines gen timetable &

resources required

Defines planned details of execution (how) :• Confirms project management• Details approach• Specifies project

funding/budget• IDs possible risks & constraints• Provides task plan &

milestones• Includes evaluation plan

(process & outcome measures)• Proposes communications plan

Documents actual project progress/status:• Specifies milestones completed & upcoming• Summarizes status (scope, schedule, cost, quality)• Discusses risks met & plans to address ones anticipated

Documents project completion & next steps:• Defines end date• Documents accomplishment of

milestones/process measures & outcomes

• Discusses what went well & not, action recommendations

Implementation

Closeout/Transition

Report(Lessons Learned)

ProjectIdentification

Termination orRoutine Operation

Project Planning for a Complex Upgrade

• Timeline/Milestones

• Resources

• Communications

• Training for trainers and end users

• Process and execution planning

• Risk analysis

• Support Plan

• Testing Plan

• Ability to react to new requirements

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Project Identification

• Identifies WHAT:• Broad project concept

• Possible project stakeholders

• Desired outcomes

• General timetable

• Required resources

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Project Plan – Timeline/Milestones

• Determine target date for production

• Determine needed outage window

• Consider school year calendar impacts

• Work backwards outlining needed tasks

• Add plenty of float in the schedule

• Share the plan outline with stakeholders to get buy in and determine conflicts

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FCPS Timeline Planning

• June 2010: FCPS upgraded to v8 sp6

• Fall 2010: Began to have evaluation meetings which reviewed each of the functional

areas in depth

• December 2010: Determined target release (v9.1 sp5)

• April 2011: Determined the target outage window

• August 2011: Upgrade tasks began

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Resource Planning

• Your role as project leader is to structure the team for the needs of the project and communicate with all stakeholders.

• Team members can serve a variety of roles• Core team• Expanded team• Focus groups• Advisors• Champions and Sponsors

• Outline expected time commitment and role when requesting someone to be a team member.

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Resource Planning

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• Cross-Departmental (Matrixed) Project Teams• Combine functional, technical and subject matter experts

to provide the necessary skill mix

• Define roles and responsibilities

• Meet regularly

• Collaborative Project Team Site• Post calendars and implementation plans

• Agenda, minutes, action items, working documents, vendor information should all have a home with team access

FCPS Resource Planning

• Established working team• Sponsors from IT and IS

• IS partners

• IT Support team

• IT systems

• Created upgrade planning team

• Created communication and training subteams

• Each team met monthly

• All documents posted to SharePoint

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Communication Planning

• Determine your stakeholders

• Determine what information they need and when

• Determine how you plan to communicate to each group

• Create a calendar of communications and owners

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Communicate

• Communication with your team is essential

• Be specific• Who is assigned a task?

• When is the deadline?

• What is the impact of a delay?

• Keep everyone informed, even if it doesn’t seem like they are impacted

FCPS Communication

• All IT and IS directors were made aware of the outage dates, June 2011.

• Quarterly communications of outage dates and coming changes were made through established channels

• Presentations were made to key instructional groups, Fall 2011

• Road show for principals, instructional partners and IT, April and May 2012

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Training Planning

• Who needs to be trained

• What type of training do they need• Overview (principals, leadership stakeholders)

• How to and best practices (school trainers and teachers)

• Determine how best to present the training materials

• Schedule and advertise trainings

• What is the follow up to keep the information fresh before the upgrade?

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FCPS Training

• Customized training environment

• Training for school-based trainers, Feb 2012

• Face-to-face training offered for central office and teachers throughout Spring 2012• Over 450 staff members trained

• Collaborate sessions for teachers last work days of school year, June 2012. • 1,400 teachers trained

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FCPS Training

• Summer trainings• Central office

• Getting ready for school opening

• Follow up office hours using Collaborate

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Support Planning

• What are the support impacts of the new version?

• Update support materials• Blackboard now has video and searchable help

• Training for support team

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FCPS Support

• Our support team was integral part of the planning team.

• FCPS was able to transition from custom created help documents and FAQs to content from Blackboard.• Imported searchable help to local servers

• Identified most common tasks and highlighted videos as “Getting Started” package

• Migrated all staff, parent, student help to one website

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Risk Planning

• What if:• Project not ready by deadline

• Project does not work as planned

• Project just does not work at all

• Key stakeholder’s unexpected emergency

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Assumption and Risk Planning

• All projects have risk, it is up to the team to identify

• Using potential problem analysis determine what risks the project has an how they might be mitigated.

• Planning will help ensure project deliverables will not be adversely impacted.

• Risks can also be positive events.

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FCPS Risks

• Load testing not scheduled until Spring 2012

• Impact of service pack change on customizations

• What if 8 days was not a large enough window?

Testing Planning

• Determine level of testing needed during the upgrade• Regression testing

• Testing of customizations

• Testing of new functionality

• Documentation of test cases and results

• Communication of test results

• Retesting

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FCPS Testing

• Test cases are laid out in Excel and assigned to testers.

• New test cases were developed for 9.1.

• Each run had a tracking sheet loaded into SharePoint.

• Testers updated the spreadsheet and opened Behind the Blackboard tickets.

• Kept production and testing issues separated

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Project Implementation

• Practice makes perfect

• Each new version has potential impacts on code or environment.

• 3 dry runs, each have their own purpose• Dry Run #1 – customization functionality, exposure to new

version

• Dry Run #2 – installation and hand off process practice

• Dry Run #3 – timing and as “real world” as possible

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When the Unexpected Happens

• A well thought-out plan will allow time to adjust the timeline.

• Risks should be identified and planned for in advance.

• Gather as much information as possible.

• Determine impact(s).

• Set plan in motion.

• Communicate any changes.

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FCPS Implementation

• Planned changes• Advanced platform

• Change in target SP from sp5 to sp7

• Migration from Learning Objects tools

• Unexpected changes• Load testing delays

• Dry Run #3 audit required environment changes

• Delayed go/no go

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FCPS 24-7 Version 8

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FCPS 24-7 Learning version 9.1

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Success

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