Universe Consolidation of Three site

In Resume
Project	Universe Consolidation of Three site
Customer	BP International( Carson, CA, Toledo, OH, Cherry-point, WA)
Period	Sep-2010 to Feb 2012
Description	Carson, Cherry-point and Toledo have MAXIMO 4 setup. More than 400 BO reports are running on MAXIMO repository. BP needed to Upgrade the MAXIMO application from 4 to 7 versions. Along with that they want to combine the database too. As a ripple effect, they need to combine three Universes and move all the reports on that consolidated universe only. Toledo Universe is in BO 6.5 version but other Universes are in BOXIR3. They also need to consolidate and keep in BOXIR3 environment.
Role	Onsite coordinator
Solution Environment	Windows 2003 server, XP SP3, Oracle 10g Database
Tools	Business Objects XIR3 (SP3), Business Objects 6.5
Highlights	Involved in the below activities: Creating proposal with the help of senior management. Resource allocation and design the project plan. Creating a security model and proposing to the client. Toledo Universe built on separate tables which are getting updated by 9 stored procedures. Analyze those procedures and create a design specs for that. Analyze three Universe (1700 objects each) . Create a consolidation plan. Analyze reports and propose a template. User requirement gathering for extra reports and additional field Additional plan for NON-MAXIMO application data which comes from Kronos, Worktech and CCTS application. They all have their fields in Universe as class and object. Universe consolidation Implementing security model in consolidated universe. Creating more than 150 reports. Designing the UAT and Go-Live Plan Handled Go-Live activities\ Managed issues

BP international was planning to upgrade their existing asset management tool MAXIMO 4 to MAXIMO 7 and create a robust reporting environment on that. MAXIMO 4 to MAXIMO 7 upgrade is really not an upgrade but majorly it is a new development as MAXIMO grew a lot. BP International also wants to merge three refinery sites data into one centralize database. As a result they also want one universe in place of three different universes in two different Business objects version.

                As I worked on their BO reporting and implemented security I was assigned for the major development of consolidation of these three universe and create 400+ reports in that environment.

                While UAT was going on, I and one of my project managers started planning on this project. First time I was exposed to detail planning in Microsoft project. I started learning about project management and planning. I learned estimation techniques and resource utilization planning. Resource planning and effort distribution was really complicated for me at starting, but later on I grabbed that easily. Once the planning was approved I was set to go client site and start this project with an offshore team of 7 BO developers from Hyderabad.

                I came to Carson, California and started face to face communication with client. My role was requirement gathering and analysis and coordinating with offshore team. There was no onsite project manager so I used to do lots of managerial stuffs too. It was planned that there will not be any development from onsite but the story changes by time.

                Working with clients in their den is completely a different experience than sitting in your cozy cubicle and developing codes. Fortunately from the beginning of my career I was exposed to client (though in phone) but there was lot to learn when you are talking face to face and meeting them every day.

                I was working with 5 SMEs who were all from different country. Though they were US citizen but they are all different in terms of regular interaction. I started learning cultural difference to make liaison with them and soon I was accepted as their colleague. 

                I came to understand that the communication is the key in on-site. Though I was fluent in English but in beginning my SMEs had a tough time to understand my accent and the words I was using as Indians speaks British English but Americans speaks Americans which is really a different language than British English. Though my accent is still not American but my words are now easily understandable to them.

                I was the only one on-site coordinator for three different sites but I was told to operate from Carson in starting and Toledo at the end after Carson and Cherry-Point go live. This setup was there as Carson and Cherry-point was similar but Toledo was completely separate and they need a person’s presence over there while developing there report. Some are new.

                So I started analyzing their reports and created BRDs for all the reports. Me along with a senior developer started analyzing the universes and found out the commonalities on basis we can join multiple universes. We previously thought about linking multiple universes but by looking to the gigantic universe we thought to start development from scratch.

It was a round the clock development, so from onsite I and from offshore a guy started working on the universe simultaneously. It is really a bad practice but if you have to manage a large project in a little amount of time, you have no choice. Me and my partner shared equal knowledge level and have great understandings which lead us to successfully join the two universes. We did in the below way:

• Started with Cherry-point universe as base as it has the largest number of objects and most number of joins.
• Started adding the objects which are not present in Cherry-point but present in Carson and Toledo Universe.
• Started joining the tables and implementing business rules.
• Created hierarchies based on the models.
• Implementing universe level security and validate the joins.
• Created several Ad-hoc reports for functionality testing.

Once the development of consolidated universe is done we started report development. In my plate there were 150 reports and I created all of those.

Amazingly and surprisingly we delivered the reports with only 5 post-production errors, which I solved within a day.

That universe was ridiculously big and complicated. But it became more complicated when we started analyzing 7 huge stored procedures which was creating 50+ objects in Toledo universe.

                After successful deployment of Carson and Cherry-point universe and report I moved to east coast and started working on Toledo universe. I analyzed those stored procedures and added the tables and joins in the existing consolidated universe using the logic extracted from the stored procedure.

                Once the universe is ready we planned to do rest of the development completely from offshore and I moved to another location with another client in a different role.