Hello all,

We're planning a 7.24 to 8.1 upgrade for later this year (HR/Financials/Proc). I personally have not done an upgrade before and was wondering if there is a document on support that can walk me through this. Are there upgrade programs that walk you through the process for this upgrade?

Can anyone give me an idea how much time such an upgrade usually takes and what is involved? What kind of resources we might need? Do you usually hire consultants or can we do it in house? :nix:

Thanks

Lawson upgrades are not especially difficult to run. They supply a nice set of docs ( called the UIP - Upgrade Information Packet) and the programs to migrate the data.

You'll need to create a new database as the data is MIGRATED rather than UPDATED, which is handy if you want to rollback!

I usually recommend 3 upgrade passes (at least!) With user testing and acceptance in between.

For resources you'll need a technical person to install and run the upgrade and LOTS of input from your power users in defining your business processes - don't let them hook you into making those decisions :bonk: The use of consultants is a matter of your companies level of expertise. If you feel comfortable doing it alone feel free - most don't. Some want a technical resource (like me) to install and execute, while others want applications consultants to assist in the decision-making for the upgraded apps.

It's a time-consuming process and if you want it to work you MUST be a slave driver :whip: and force your users to test, Test TEST!!!

We just finished our 7.2.4 to 8.1.0 skip upgrade. The UIP is the document that is supposed to walk you through the upgrade. Lawson updates the UIP and the skip upgrade programs every month. If you are a large organization and it takes you more than a few months, you'll find youself upgrading the skip upgrade programs each month to get the improvements. Of course, you want to go live with the same version that you tested with so you need to freeze at some point.

At the same time, Lawson is issuing patches, CTPs, MSPs and ESPs for your existing 7.2.4 test and production environments as well as for your new 8.1.0 test and production environments. You need to strike a balance between maintining stability while you test and keeping relatively current. You could easily complete the upgrade and still not be current.

Hi,

I am also working on an upgrade from 7.2.2.7 to 8.1 skip upgrade on i-Series. I am only on the initial planning phases. Do you have any "watch words" for the upgrade? That may help me do the planning better.

Did you go for the absence management module? I heard, it will pose a lot of performance issues especially because it creates so many EVENT records too.

I am actually looking out for things (similar to above) that I might have to prepare myself with during the planning itself.

Our system has got lot of customizations. We even included userexits in Batch programs. I am looking out for designs that will permit me segregate my business logic from out of Lawson programs so that the upgrade each time in the future will not be a pain. Any suggestions or thougths on this?

Thanks,
Venki.

Venki:

You wrote,
> Our system has got lot of customizations. We even included userexits
> in Batch programs. I am looking out for designs that will permit me
> segregate my business logic from out of Lawson programs so that the
> upgrade each time in the future will not be a pain. Any suggestions or
> thougths on this?

You may find that, except for userexits, your customizations will be very expensive. We have a few customizations in our Lawson system, almost all of them created by me. I created a spreadsheet to track them, what I now call the Lawson Change Control System. It works very well to tell us what our customizations will cost us, time-wise, whenever upgrades or CTP's come along. With 25 customizations, our master spreadsheet predicts that we will have to spend about 60 man-hours to re-apply. The spreadsheet estimates have been refined, and are now fairly accurate.

You can't just say, X number of programs customized, X times Y man-hours. Each type of customization has a specific time associated with it. I wish that I could share my system, however it still needs my supervisor's approval. For now, I suggest a matrix, recording each customized program and what was customized within it, then giving a weighting to each type of customization. The sum of the estimated man-hours is your time expense for upgrading, above and beyond all of the other Lawson costs.

BTW, userexits aren't very expensive time-wise. In my matrix, I give them a default time of 0.5 man-hours. There are weighting multipliers that affect this, however it's a good approximation. :thumb:

Hi, cd_dotdot

The best solution is to outsource the work to any other companies who has experiance in upgrading, i can name few companies who does this work and even they are cost effective, like in India most of companies does this kind of work by offshore model of development