Does Pega recommend Production Pilot Application deployment( two rules schema and shared/separate data schema)?
Client business requirement to have a pilot application deployed in production to test with production data first, then application moved to production with all users. Two approaches below:
Production rule schema , Pilot rule schema, Shared data schema - challenge: to separate/recognize non versioned rules, application data, work object for get next work, batch jobs etc.
Production rule schema, Pilot rule schema; Production data schema, Pilot data schema - challenge: need to merge work objects related data to production?
Client is asking for official recommendation from Pega and if not currently supported, will product support it in future version?
Client requirement to create a pilot production environment (PRPC7.19 or higher). The purpose is to implement a phased deployment approach over the course from weeks to months depending on the size of the deployment. Limit the pilot user as 10% of user population. As Pilot proceeds and is considered successful, the application can be moved to Production and rolled out to the entire end user community.
Benefits:
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Pilot represents lower risk, but allows for the ability to roll back to the previous version if needed.
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Users typically have an expedited mechanism for receiving support from Dev team; reduce P1/P2 ticket from production.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
What will be the outcome of this pilot production test ? Is it like you want a set of user to first use the system and give feedback and then based on their feedback make changes and finally bring all the users on board ?
I think apart from doing it in a pilot phase kind of thing, you can also think of setting up a pre prod environment and let few set of users use the same .
Let me know your thought on this
Pegasystems Inc.
US
Yes, your understanding of the outcome is correct. The background of this requirement is: Large application built on smart dispute framework. It will take couple years to develop and add more LOBs and will have 6000 concurrent users. The approach considered multiple dev teams working on same application and multiple releases in a year. The approach should also work for PRPC and SmartDispute upgrade.
From IT side:
The idea is basically to reduce risk:
- Deployment can happen in advance without user down time;
- In case need a deployment roll back or P1 ticket, user can just switch back to production environment;
- Reduce P1 ticket as any issue come will only impact 10% of production user, dev team will have more time to fix defects until business is comfortable to roll out to entire user groups
From User side:
User will have better user training etc.
We recommended something like preproduction or separate pilot production environment that use a testing account to test 100% case functions and real Visa integrations etc. Currently client wants to evaluate a “True Pilot” application that uses production cases and recommendations.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi
Lets say you already have 1000 users accessing and using your current production environment ( Env -A )
The production environment is having Application A with highest ruleset version 01-01-01
For pilot, do you want to update this existing Production application itself then ? I mean, you have your modified rulese created under Ruleset say 01-01-02 and you want your application A in production now points to 01-01-02 ?
Pegasystems Inc.
US
Yes, the concept is there will be two applications in production for couple weeks. Production Application A with ruleset 01-01-01, and Pilot application with ruleset 01-01-02. Among 1000 users, 90% users will continue use production application. 10% or 20 users will be given Pilot application link and work on both inflight production case(work objects with real service calls) or create new cases. The requirement asks both application access production transactional data( real account, real service calls, not testing data). After business users are good with their pilot application, then either another 90% users move to pilot application, make pilot application become production application, then stop the original production application. Or deploy new code to production and stop pilot applicaiton.
This requirement leads to a solution that shared work related tables,assignment table etc - shared data schema. There will be a lot customization. Client is asking does the product support such a solution or not...