Resource The Upgrade

With a defined scope and a reliable estimate, the next step is to define the resource profile required to execute the plan. This is not about assigning specific individuals, but about understanding the leadership, skills, and team structure needed for a successful upgrade.

The Upgrade Lead

The single most important role to plan for is the Upgrade Lead. Whether the upgrade is being performed by a single developer or a larger team, this role is the cornerstone of a successful project. If one person is doing the work, they are the Upgrade Lead.

Key Responsibilities:

• Owns the execution strategy: Breaks down the high-level plan into detailed tasks for the team.
  
  
• Coordinates the work: Manages dependencies and orchestrates the team's activities to ensure they are working efficiently.
  
  
• Drives problem-solving: Acts as the first point of contact for technical issues, responsible for diagnosing problems and leveraging documentation or Quantexa support channels to find solutions.

Leveraging Best Practice Expertise

While the core team focuses on execution, it's vital to have access to up-to-date Quantexa best practices to ensure the upgraded solution is robust and future-proof. This doesn't need to be a full-time role on the project team.

Instead, your plan should include leveraging your organization's existing experts. Plan to engage with your Quantexa-assigned Architect or Technical Delivery Oversight (TDO) at key points in the project. They can provide invaluable guidance on implementing new patterns, validating your approach, and ensuring you are maximizing the value of the new platform version.

The Need for Deep Solution Knowledge in a Reset Upgrade

For an Incremental Upgrade, a well-documented scope and customization tracker is usually sufficient for the team to work from.

However, if you are performing a Reset Upgrade, it is critical that your plan accounts for access to deep expertise on the existing solution. Someone with a strong understanding of the history of the codebase, and the business logic behind its customizations, is essential. This expertise is vital for making informed decisions about which components are valuable and should be rebuilt, and which represent historical technical debt that can be left behind.

Planning the Team Size and Structure

The temptation on a project with a tight deadline can be to plan for a large team. However, the structure of the work itself is the primary driver of team size.

Use the following principles to guide your resource planning:

• Incremental Upgrades are Often Single-Threaded: An incremental upgrade often involves a sequence of dependent steps that cannot be easily parallelized. For this reason, a plan based on a small, focused team of 1-3 people is typically the most effective.
  
  
• Reset Upgrades Offer More Parallelism: This approach has more potential for parallel workstreams (e.g., one developer on data ingestion, another on scoring). This allows you to plan for a slightly larger team to work effectively, but the work must still be carefully orchestrated by the Upgrade Lead.

Validating Your Resource Plan

Before finalizing the plan, perform a final check to ensure your resourcing strategy is sound.

Action: Validate your intended team profile.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does our plan account for a clear Upgrade Lead to coordinate the technical work?
  
  
• Does our plan include checkpoints to engage with our Quantexa Architect/TDO for best practice guidance?
  
  
• If we are doing a Reset Upgrade, have we identified how we will access deep knowledge of the existing solution?
  
  
• Is the planned team size appropriate for our chosen upgrade approach?

With a well-defined resource profile, you are ready to move on to the next stage: Define Testing Requirements.