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RAAus new website/members portal


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rolling migration is not uncommon

Sorry Andy, I would have to 101% disagree with you on this...in my professional and personal opinion. Dealing with data migrations for over 30 years now and in my positions as Project Manager, Program Manager, Project/Program Office Manager and Enterprise PMO manager there has not been 1 case, NOT 1 where a rolling migration has been necessary and if a Project Brief or Project Plan came across my desk with this as the plan, it would have gone straight in the bin. Even in cases where there is issues with the mapping between the source and target state then there are other alternatives...hey, even export to Excel, data manipulation, and then import into the target state.

Rolling migration is so uncommon in professional data migration that I have never ever seen it considered as any kind of viable option.

 

This seems to me that it has been done by a backyarder. No data verification, no data integrity done etc prior to any thought of migration. The incorrect email addresses, as just one example, is to me just an excuse for inapt management...prior to data migration the data should have been verified and checked for integrity and with Email addresses, a simple mass email out to all addresses, even just as an announcement, would normally have been done to verify the scope of bounce backs etc to ascertain the size of the issue and then the data updated through other sources i.e. phone etc, PRIOR to data migration

 

 

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Guest Maj Millard
... and I remember telling your predecessors that using the email address as a login for the RAA portal would have saved you a lot of grief. Its a standard practice across the internet.A few months ago you could have forced everyone to do a password change which would have flushed out the people with bad email addresses.

 

Typical RAA eh? I'm guessing there is no online form for reporting errors and omissions, all has to be done over the phone

There is an online complaints form or call the CEO direct........

 

 

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Guest Maj Millard
in the overall scheme of things probably not but that's not the point. Its about saving time and money.It also seems a bit weird to be still importing data on a live system, what happens when someone updates a detail and the data import wipes it?

 

but its the RAA right?

FT don't believe I saw you put your hand up at the last board election...."..talks cheap, but it take money to buy whiskey "......and you do talk a lot.

 

 

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Guest Andys@coffs

well....all I can say is that our experiences are different.

 

I have been involved in ERP migrations where those systems are deeply integrated between modules, in that case as you say migration is a single point in time and the new system doesn't go live until the old system is 100% cleansed and migrated across and before the migration occurs data cleansing is standard practise as is deciding what you intend to migrate, either full historical transactions or in migration determined summary data...in finance systems you might make a decision to migrate 1 years of full transactional history and then further back summary data only so that the core transactions might well not be included, but the summary data is sufficient that the running totals are still accurate..... In any event you don't make it up on the go and its agreed and tested for conceptual flaws before stakeholders sign off, and again in UAT and the trial migration tests...... Also if you determine to bring across summary data then you are agreeing to maintain in read only mode the old system so that the more historical data can be reviewed if necessary....knowing that at a point down stream...[perhaps 3 years perhaps 7 years] that you'll turn the old system off.....but that requires extra licensing and extra infrastructure etc...

 

In this case there is very little integration of the old data, in the old system hardly anything is known about members and their aircraft (Im talking in the computer system, not the paper files.....) and as such I don't see much of an issue with choosing to flow these across as needed rather than a single point in time....I agree that in almost any other system of complexity such an approach wont work, but RAAus is not moving from current-1 technology to current but rather rock tablets.......

 

Ian I don't agree with the email....you suggest that they should have done one mail out before........there is only one email address that they have on record per member and we all get email from RAAus at least once a month sometimes seemingly much more......doesn't that one email test count???? In my last post I said that I was told that back when I was on the board that 93% didn't bounce....while 7% of circa 10,000 members is still significant its still very much a minority....

 

Lastly lets be brutally honest about data cleansing......its not a technologist issue!! its a staff issue, assuming that somehow the staff have the means to identify and fix the bad/stale data, no programmer can write code to turn bad/stale data into current true data, that has to be up to the staff being led through that activity....lets not judge the supplier as being a "backyarder" without understanding if the failure here was with the supplier or the RAAus staff...assuming there was a failure at all, which Im not sure I agree that there has....

 

Also lets look at it from a total cost perspective, cleaning data is labour intensive and in most cases delivers no real efficiency realisation or benefit at a whole of organisation level......however one of the guiding design principles of the requirements document is that members are to be able to cleanse their own data as much as possible..... if you then enact that requirement and release the bad/stale data to the members with the ability to fix their own wrong data, which then flows through a workflow of staff based acceptance of change, then have you not achieved what you set out to do without really expending very much on that activity?

 

All this I write from what I recall of the requirements document, it wasn't long after the project started that I left the board. I also have yet to be provided credentials to log in so I cant say if the requirement for member cleansing that was espoused as an essential requirement has actually been delivered.....

 

YMMV......

 

Andy

 

 

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Guest Maj Millard

And I'm told you haven't even put your money where your mouth is and become an RAA member.....tell us FT ...are you a member of RAA ?.....an organization that you constantly criticise ?.

 

 

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Look he former CEO asked me to do some work well within my ability...I didnt because the former website was a patchwork quilt...i dont mean that with any disrespect to former builders and maintainers...it just happens

 

This shit takes time and money to change...so steady up ...the facts are well beyond most people heres ability or imaginations...give them time then judge..

 

It is always easier to build new sites and databases than fix legacy issues

 

 

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Also having the website tied into an old DB with 10K odd members is a nightmare....i could have designed that new site in my sleep...but the issue I was not prepared to risk was the DB integration....

 

with DB integrtion, you inherit previous IT mistakes, coders mistakes, data entry mistakes, mgmt mistakes and basically everyone elses shit... then your expected to solve it within time and budget like your a magician...

 

So go easy...anyone shooting thier mouth off on this issue clearly lacks any real comprehension of the disasterous issues that can and often do arise.

 

 

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Who can do nothing right in your view. That's my point. You would have more cred if you were less biased. Nev

I think the only way we could please FT is if we moved RAA HQ to wellcamp 074_stirrer.gif.5dad7b21c959cf11ea13e4267b2e9bc0.gif

 

 

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I'm at a loss for ideas, in that regard. I support RAAus. That doesn't mean they are /have to be perfect in all ways. Criticism is often justified but it should be constructive. Nev

No one is perfect, especially when it comes to cleaning up other peoples mess, creating change, cultural change etc...

What we need to do is just allow some time and insist things keep moving in the right direction...

 

Right now surely blind freddy can see this current board and CEO are moving in the right direction....

 

Our criticism and feedback is very important, but we need to ensure we provide clear feedback, with clear suggestions and solutions.

 

 

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On data migration and the IT challenges of migrating from old to new backends ...

 

1. Data quality in the legacy system is not an IT issue it is a management issue

 

2. Data extraction accuracy from legacy to upload to new is an IT issue

 

3. Program design to utilize rolling live vs one hit cut-over is a Management decision

 

Using my 20+ years experience in IT integration and migration programs and looking at what appears to be the RAA implementation

 

1. given the known data issues on the legacy system I find it incredible that any sane management would use rolling release

 

2. given the known data quality issues in the legacy system there SHOULD have been extraction from legacy tested by exception query based on known logic eg date of first certificate required that an owner maintenance record of same date exists. This is logically the responsibility of the OPs and Tech managers as they are the SMEs on what records are logically necessary

 

3. once a staging system was fully populated it should then have been sanity checked eg the year listings of hours records should appear sequentially

 

4. once known issue types were known a launch member communication with these known issues could have been drafted to simplify the transition for members and ease the workflow of corrections and notices back to RAA from members

 

Much of the errors being fed back to RAA by multiple members will be duplication of a single underlying issues that a SANE migration and implementation plan would have minimised.

 

I give the personnel who designed the new front end members portal a very strong pass, I give the RAA personnel who thought this end-to-end process was acceptable and valid a definite fail and I hope the RAA personnel having to deal with all the additional contacts from members that this process has created can understand that it need not have been this way.

 

And as I have posted - from my data as it appeared there were demonstrable data extraction issues, illogical data issues, missing data issues, errors of layout and sort within parts of the portal and overall were I to rely on the records as they appeared I was illegal to fly the aircraft I own and could not fly much else besides

 

 

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Ross just let me say that I don't criticize the RAA without good reason. Tony King and Trevor Bange are doing a great job representing SEQ. Tony King is an IT guru at the local council so if he thinks this roll out is going well, that's good enough for me.

 

Let me just say that manually editing records gets tedious very quickly when you are doing them in the hundreds. 034_puzzled.gif.ea6a44583f14fcd2dd8b8f63a724e3de.gif

 

 

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rolling migration is not uncommon......as long as those members who are live on the system have all their records migrated across then what does it matter if member X is not yet on the system. Its only an issue if my aircraft was sold to him, or visa versa and that can be fixed at the time it occurs by taking X live perhaps before he otherwise would have been.Andy

Well, it does matter to me as right now I can't do my rego renewal online.

The old link for renewals doesn't work any more and I still haven't received my login, which is required to get it done on the new system.

 

I know RAA have my correct email address as I have been receiving emails from them including the news item about the new portal...

 

 

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We rang up to renew our aircraft by card as the promised password had not arrived. Lady was surprised we hadn't got one as she thought the roll-out had been completed, so she issued a password, so one of us could get on. I opted to wait. One RAA email said to contact them if we had not received anything by 15 November.

 

 

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And I'm told you haven't even put your money where your mouth is and become an RAA member.....tell us FT ...are you a member of RAA ?.....an organization that you constantly criticise ?.

Sorry I am with FT on this one. The roll out has been farcical at best.

 

 

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New little bug that is a bit annoying - in the Manage my Membership screen you have the option to maintain and save changes to many of your contact fields. For a very weird and unexplained reason the field 'Telephone Number" which is user editable refuses to save any changes and will on save change simply revert to the previous incorrect number. RAA office advised but IF you think you have updated your contact details through the portal I suggest you go back and see if the changes actually still exist on the system.

 

And I know this is weird because the contact number and email for my emergency contact was updated through the portal and did save as changes to the back end - simply weird that one works and the other does not.

 

 

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