10 Tips for a JD Edwards upgrade

I’ve been involved with more than 100 JD Edwards upgrades, so this experience gives me the opportunity to highlight some lessons that I’ve learned along the way.  Some of these are super simple and some involve a little more planning and execution (and sometimes some external help).

This is going to be a multiple blog post article on what I see as 10 things that you can get right to help make your next JD Edwards project a success.

Tip 1: Establish a project scope and stick to it.

There are generally a lot of choices for an upgrade, and they are only getting tougher.  Do I change database, do I change platforms?  Should I move to the cloud, do I need a managed service?  Yes – lots of questions, but they really should not get in the way of the mechanics of what is being done.  You’ll still need to do the same amount of testing, and let’s be honest, this is generally the critical path on any upgrade project.

Form a clear idea of what you want to achieve for the project.  Scope the technical decisions early.  Don’t be afraid of a couple of architectural changes in addition to the upgrade itself - refer back to my observation on testing [critical path].

Figure 1: There are so many architectural options when considering an upgrade

Use the testing and the project to achieve some strategic goals.  Nearly every upgrade that I’m involved in has more than a single dimension.  More often than not, we are performing upgrades at the same time as cloud migrations.  As I alluded to, this is a good combination and a tight scope.  If I was to take on an upgrade and cloud migration, I’d try and not change much else in that step.

Changing too much can introduce too much risk. For instance, changing your output management software [createform] can be very onerous and take a lot of time.  If you think of all the time that you have spent on making your invoice print perfectly, every time…  Any change in this area is going to take a lot of time!  You can do that iteratively when you get an opportunity.  Output management solutions can be run in parallel and give you a perfect fallback position.

Be tight on scope and agree early – what is in and what is out.