Planning an Upgrade to Siebel 7 > Planning an Upgrade >

Establishing the Upgrade Team

Assemble a project team with the right skill set. Team members must be proficient in the technologies introduced in the latest release and understand the new architecture and performance best practices. A successful upgrade requires:

• Detailed understanding of customizations in the previous implementation.
• Familiarity with the conventions of the operating system in which your Siebel Servers run.
• Expertise in network connectivity and software installation on the application server and client operating systems.
• User accounts with access privileges to install new software.
• Expertise in database installation, tuning, and administration of the relational database management system (RDBMS).

How you staff your upgrade project may vary according to the requirements for your project, but generally, you need team members working in the following roles:

• Business analyst. Business analysts map your existing business requirements to out-of-the-box functionality in the new version to identify gaps and reduce the need for additional configuration. They will help with testing and training, and coordinate with other business resources.
• Migration specialist. Migration specialists are responsible for upgrading the back-end systems, including the development, user acceptance testing (UAT), pre-production, and production environments. This includes handling migration issues, validating hardware and software requirements, and assisting with all system administration tasks related to migrating to a new version of Siebel applications.
• Scripting specialist. Scripting specialists are technical analysts skilled in JavaScript and Web application development. They will work with technical architects, Siebel Expert Services, and other project team members to design and develop JavaScripts and custom Web applications.
• Customer resources. Customer resources such as database administrator, system administrators, and desktop support analysts must represent the implementation's existing functionality and provide back-up infrastructure support during the upgrade.

Other specialized resources may be required if you have complex configurations, business processes, integrations, or infrastructure. For example, you might need an EAI integration specialist to identify how to replace complex integrations with standard modules or functionality in the new version. If your implementation runs on IBM zSeries hardware, you might need a technical architect skilled with DB2 UDB for OS/390 and z/OS.