COMMUNITY WRITER

2015 Readers Choice: PeopleSoft Article

Continuously Upgrade?!?
Are they crazy?!? No, its
actually quite clever.
Understanding and embracing
the Selective Adoption Model
By Wendy Plante

If youre a PeopleSoft customer

on or heading towards 9.2,
chances are youve heard the
term Selective Adoption.
I asked David Bain, Product Strategy Director for
PeopleTools, how hed explain this new concept
to someone whod never heard of it. Selective
Adoption describes the lifecycle management
process that lets PeopleSoft customers choose
the changes that they want to take on their time.
It allows for a continuous flow of new features
two to three times a year without having to ever
go through a major upgrade again. Customers
take only the features and maintenance they
want, when they want them and maintenance is
included automatically.
Perhaps youve done some research and
know about PI (PeopleSoft Update Images),
PUM (PeopleSoft Update Manager) or PTF
(PeopleSoft Test Framework). Maybe youve
attended a conference session, participated
in a webinar or watched a Spotlight Series or
PeopleTalk about it on YouTube. If youve done
any of these things, youre probably thinking
that it sounds crazy. I know the first time I
heard Paco Aubrejuan, Senior VP, PeopleSoft
Enterprise at Oracle say thered be no more
releases after 9.2 and that wed be doing more
frequent upgrades, I was pretty sure he had lost
his mind.
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Q&A Issue 5 2015

I dont know about

you, but as a seasoned
PeopleSoft user I mostly
dread the idea of an
upgrade. While its
exciting to embrace new
technology, theres a
lot of time and money
expended to make
it happen and by the time you consume the
changes you have to take to simply maintain the
product, you often end up not being able to
take advantage of all the new things that made
it seem worthwhile in the first place. The idea of
going through that on a regular basis was just
something that seemed both impossible and
completely undesirable.
Now that Im on the other side having
upgraded to 9.2 and living the selective
adoption lifestyle I can say it is really quite
clever. Were never going to need a 9.3 because
were absorbing change and delivering value
to our users all the time well, quarterly to
be exact.
I bet youre thinking - how did you get there
and, more importantly, how can I get there?
We developed a strategy that involved both
business and IT, established a cadence for
updates, leveraged the tools available to
better enable the technical consumption and

Our IT department is a very lean organization and the

leadership is very much engaged in all strategic decision
making processes.

testing processes, defined (and in

some cases redefined) roles and
responsibilities and then dove
in headfirst.
There isnt a one-size-fits-all best
practice recommendation for how
to do this either. Organizations
come in varying shapes and sizes
with different cultures, access to
resources, tolerance for change and
mindsets around ERP. With selective
adoption, you need to strike the
right balance for your organization
to be the most successful.
In order to realize the benefits
of Selective Adoption, your
organization must change. Youve
got to continuously assess newly
delivered capabilities, collaborate
with the business to prioritize and
schedule the adoption of new
functionality, explains David.
Organizations that roll out small
incremental changes and develop
sensible maintenance plans tend to
have the highest rates of success in
adapting to the new model.
Its definitely a different mindset
than what PeopleSoft customers

have traditionally been accustomed

to. You have to SaaS-ify (yes, I
just made that word up) your
organization. Instead of expecting
a giant costly and time-consuming
upgrade every three to five years,
you need to be thinking about
shorter, smaller-scope efforts
more frequently. In fact, there
are several key considerations
across the four areas of strategy,
business, technology and resources
that every organization needs to
address in order to embrace this
new model.

STRATEGY
Its critical for every organization
to establish a strategy that works
best for their organization. Youll
want to take into consideration
governance and ownership, your
approach to customizations, ability
to manage risk and organizational
change, scheduling needs and
involvement of users in order to
develop a comprehensive plan.
While its advantageous to have
these conversations throughout
the planning and upgrade process
so everyone understands the
long-term plan, many customers

are choosing to wait until theyre

through the upgrade to 9.2 because
theres simply too much going on
to try to insert this new model into
the conversation.
I spoke to Arkalgud Venkatesh, IT
Manager at Alameda County, which
is nestled along the east coast of
San Francisco Bay and includes
the cities of Oakland and Berkeley,
California. Theyre longtime
PeopleSoft customers having
implemented in 2000 and recently
upgraded to 9.2 in May (FSCM)
and August (HCM). Our users
are very adaptive of technology
and great partners with IT, says
Venkatesh. We adopted the new
process during the upgrade which
was on a longer timeline since we
did the project with our internal
staff. During the upgrade process,
there were 3 to 4 images that were
released, so we were forced to
discuss and land on a strategy to
address the Selective Adoption
process. We are very glad with the
steps we took and the model that
we have going forward. In fact,
Alameda County recently received
an Excellence in Technology Award

We plan to do a tools upgrade every 2 years and as part of the

tools upgrade, we will apply the current image at that point so
that we can be up to date.
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from the California Exposition and State Fair which

Venkatesh says is a real testament to their leadership
and the path that they are taking for the county.
So, what does their strategy look like? Our IT
department is a very lean organization and the
leadership is very much engaged in all strategic
decision making processes, says Venkatesh. The
county typically has governing bodies for projects
but also have broader portfolio meetings where they
address each units departmental vision. Venkatesh
feels that adoption of PeopleSoft images and
technology has to be a collaborative effort between
IT and the individual user departments.
IT traditionally does the research on the
recommended or delivered path by Oracle. We
analyze, make recommendations to the user
community on the pros and cons of each of the
image updates along with the impact on our existing
customizations, and most importantly on the
business processes. Since each of these adoptions
take a considerable amount of time and resources, it
becomes paramount to be mindful of the availability
of the users and we plan our projects so that we can
integrate the testing time needed for updates with
the testing that is scheduled for a specific project
on hand, Venkatesh added. He also noted that the
direction and project planning is owned by the IT
Department, while users are very active and proactive
partners. We plan to do a tools upgrade every 2
years and as part of the tools upgrade, we will apply
the current image at that point so that we can be up
to date. Any images that contain compliance-related
and/or tax updates that need to be applied will be
applied on ad-hoc basis.
While theyre still relatively new to the process,
Venkatesh says that Alameda County is optimistic
about the future and the potential to lower total cost
of ownership while maintaining the ability to retain
needed customizations. Selective Adoption allows
flexibility to pull only the needed features. Once
youve analyzed one or two images and estimated the
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potential effort needed, it is a much more streamlined

and efficient process.
Depending upon the complexity and culture of your
organization, it may be best to have a third party
help facilitate these discussions. Susan G. Komen,
a not-for-profit health entity that upgraded to 9.2
last November is one such example. Our upgrade
implementation partner facilitated a workshop
in July. In the workshop we were able to not only
understand the options available, but we were also
able to work through various tracks which helped
us kick-start our strategic planning for selective
adoption recounts Subhendu Rath, Director of IT
Enterprise Systems at Komen. Further, he suggests,
I think it was the right decision for us to wait until
after the upgrade knowing our tight timeline and
the adverse impact to our user base that we would
have experienced in the event of the timeline
Being that theyre still early in the planning phases,
he explains that it looks as though the best scenario
for their users schedules and to accommodate the
fact that a large portion of their user population is
comprised of volunteers who are slightly more averse
to change; they will likely do annual updates and have
them be a mix of maintenance, new functionality and
strategic customizations. Rath sees them as being
cautiously optimistic about the future of this new
approach. Given that Selective Adoption is a new
concept, there will be more of a learning curve for us
once we start the process for the first official time.
Our plan is to first experience and then evaluate the
overall risks and benefits and make a longer-term
recommendation to leadership.

BUSINESS
Establishing a strategy is a fundamental requirement
in order to take advantage of Selective Adoption;
however, the most successful organizations tend to be
those that have a strong relationship between IT and
the business users.
At NYU Langone Medical Center a US News
and World Reports-ranked best hospital and best

graduate medical school located

in New York we jointly share
responsibility for our ERP and
have achieved great benefit since
establishing this relationship. My
colleague Mark Negron, Director
of Corporate Systems Solutions
Development explains, we asked
our users to step up and become
module owners. Theyre responsible
for prioritizing enhancements and
reviewing whats delivered in each
image to determine how we would
like to leverage the changes. Weve
found that giving users a voice
makes them more active in the

process and ultimately adds

to the quality of the solution we
are delivering.

for the year ahead is helping to gain

a greater degree of participation
throughout the process.

He further suggests that a key

to fostering the relationship with
business is about planning and
prioritization. We distribute a
twelve to eighteen month calendar
which has taken the business
requirements into consideration
and incorporates quarterly releases
with specific dates where scope is
defined, development is completed
and when testing and deployment
will take place. Being able to plan

Each quarter, our process is to

review delivered functionality within
the current image and prioritize
our strategic enhancements to
define the scope of our update.
Business analysts from my team
are constantly in contact with
the module owners to help them
understand what is being delivered
as well as working with the
developers to determine level of
effort to implement. We collectively

Each quarter, our

process is to review
delivered functionality
within the current
image and prioritize our
strategic enhancements
to define the scope of
our update.

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go through an exercise to determine the scope based

on priority, time to implement and work days in the
release cycle. Mark asserts that its also critical to
regularly stay in contact throughout the continuous
delivery process. We maintain communication
with our users via weekly meetings with our module
owners. We make sure that the meeting is in person
and that our participants are engaged. We follow
up those meetings with bi-weekly meetings with
leadership including our CFO and CIO, so they
have an opportunity to validate decisions made
by the module owners and to ensure we are
considering the overall goals of the institution
when making decisions.
We all agree that its been a very successful model.
Mark describes the transformation really well. Prior to
Selective Adoption, it was difficult to have discussions
with our business partners about the roadmap for
PeopleSoft. Discussions revolved around what was
coming out years from now. With the continuous
delivery model, I can speak to the business about
how PeopleSoft can look now. Our conversations
are focused on our roadmap for the future that
includes incremental changes that influence delivered
functionality along with strategic enhancements that
are key to our institution.

TECHNOLOGY
There are many tools available to PeopleSoft
customers to leverage throughout the Selective
Adoption process. Learning about all of the Lifecycle
Management tools (LCM) alone can be overwhelming;
coupled with the various other aspects of this
process that have to be managed andit can be
quite complicated. However, understanding the key
products that are available to you will help enable the
process and allow you to most effectively accomplish
your goals.
Oracle has done a great job sharing content on each
of these tools. Wells Fargo, a multinational banking
and financial services holding company and the largest
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bank in the world by market value, was one of the

first organizations ever to implement PeopleSoft and
followed suit by being an early 9.2 adopter. They have
had significant experience using many of the lifecycle
management tools, and have offered a number of
sessions at Oracle Open World, COLLABORATE,
RECONNECT and the PeopleSoft Customer
Advisory Board sharing their lessons learned
and success stories.
I asked Paul Brand, Technology Manager at Wells
Fargo and longtime user of PeopleSoft, to help us
better understand at a high level each of the key
tools. I think he did a spectacular job translating these
various products into simple terms that even a nontechnical person like me can easily understand.
Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO)
The Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO) is Oracles
tool for quickly analyzing the contents of a PeopleSoft
Image (PI). The purpose of the CFO is to help you
identify what has changed between your current
image and your target image. You input your current
image number and your target image number, and the
CFO provides a description of all the feature changes.
The CFO quickly, reliably, and efficiently informs users
about what is being delivered in the new images. It is
the first tool you use to understand what is changing
in the new image, but other tools are necessary to do
complete analysis.
PeopleSoft Update Image (PI)
In the Selective Adoption paradigm, Oracle publishes
PeopleSoft Images, which are complete working
PeopleSoft environments with the latest code line.
You download the image and use that image as your
basis for comparison and as the source for changes
you choose to take.
PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM)
The PeopleSoft Update Manager is the central tool
behind Oracles PeopleSoft Selective Adoption

strategy. You use the PUM to

create change packages in the
PeopleSoft Image (PI), according
to your needs and strategy.
Are you trying to get current
on maintenance? Do you have
a specific bug to install? Are
you trying to implement a new
feature? PUM supports all of these
approaches.
One of the important features of
the PUM is its ability to calculate
and include predecessors (or
dependencies and dependency
calculations as Oracle refers to
them). If I need to apply the
Fix for Bug A, and Bug A is
dependent on Bug B, the PUM will
automatically include Bug B in my
change package. The predecessor
calculations are very sophisticated
and seem to be bulletproof.
Getting current on maintenance
can produce large change
packages. It is neither feasible nor
important to do thorough analysis
on all the changes. Understanding
collisions between your
customization and the delivered
code is important. Understanding
new features is important. Typically,
other changes can be dealt with
through regression testing.
Change Assistant (CA)
The Change Assistants job
remains to be to apply changes
to your environments. In the
Selective Adoption paradigm, you
use Change Assistant to move
your change package from the

PeopleSoft Image to your working

environments.
PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF)
Oracle delivers a test automation
facility called PeopleSoft Test
Framework (PTF). Like other tools
in this class, PTF uses a captureand-replay model to allow you to
create reusable test scripts. The
value proposition with PTF is that
you can create reusable test scripts
that will allow you to keep the cost
and time of testing lower over the
long term.
PTF has some unique capabilities
because it is aware of the
PeopleTools metadata. You can
use the Test Coverage Report to
understand whether you have test
assets for what is in your change
package, and to scope your test
effort to what is changing.
You can use PTF to create simple
test scripts with limited lifespans,
or you can invest significantly
in PTF to create sophisticated,
reusable test assets to enable
an automated regression testing
practice.

their organization and what theyre

doing with their resources to
manage this new approach.
PeopleSoft 9.2 and the Selective
Adoption methodology have
enabled a more agile approach
within our IT organizational
structure. Pure development
roles have evolved into more of
a balance between functional
and technical focus. Given there
has been a greater emphasis
on usability and design
methodologies which has therefore
enabled a more technologyagnostic approach, were moving
away from exclusively PeopleSoft
development roles to a greater
focus on Java and graphic design
skills. Further, the previously purely
functional roles are now changing
to become more processoriented, says Mark. At Hays,
theyre working towards a shift in
the responsibilities of the business
analyst. These analysts will now
specialize within modules and work
closely with the development team
to understand dependencies. They
will facilitate far closer working
relationships with the business
users, he suggests.

RESOURCES
Certainly, the selective adoption
model has an impact on your
resources. I spoke to Mark Thomas,
the UK IT Director for Hays plc
a worldwide staffing company
providing recruitment and human
resources services to better
understand how their upgrade to
9.2 in January 2015 has impacted

Mark knows that the change to

more frequent updates will have
a huge impact on their testing
resources that are designed to
undertake a major upgrade every
three to four years, which has
been their traditional cadence. He
explains, weve deployed a pilot of
PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF)
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In discussions with Oracle executives in both the US and UK, it

is clear that there is no single recommended approach and that
working with partners to identify the best methodology for your
organization and/or industry could be beneficial.

in one module to evaluate the benefits. We recognize

that adopting the continuous delivery process will
result in increased and ongoing testing demands with
our business teams. We think PTF is a tool that could
effectively reduce the business manpower required, so
this pilot exercise is a key initiative for Hays. We started
discussing Selective Adoption during the upgrade, but in
retrospect we would have spent more time implementing
PTF fully in conjunction with the upgrade test cycles if we
had the time and realized the future benefit.
A lot of organizations are considering the possibility
of outsourcing all or part of their development
organizations as a means of managing the complexity of
resource planning. There are many variables with each
release most notably the levels of effort required from
one image to consume the delivered change along with
the strategic enhancements required by the business
that make it very challenging to determine what the
appropriate size and makeup of your IT team should
be. Mark says that Hays is going through that exercise
right now too. In discussions with Oracle executives
in both the US and UK, it is clear that there is no single
recommended approach and that working with partners
to identify the best methodology for your organization
and/or industry could be beneficial. We have been
working closely with partners to help scope out such
a solution. Outsourcing of design and user interface
elements is one area were considering to ensure optimal
implementation of any newly deployed features.

SUMMARY
Selective Adoption is a new and complex concept for the
PeopleSoft community. There are lots of answers already,
but still even more questions. In order to succeed in the
9.2 and beyond environment, it is critical for customers
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to truly understand the continuous delivery model and

to be thoughtful and comprehensive in developing a
strategy for their individual organization.
There are some really great resources out there already
that you can leverage. There is a three-part Spotlight
Series on Selective Adoption that I found to be quite
informative. Each of the three videos is about an hour
long and brings together a lot of valuable content in
a clear and concise manner. The series can be found
at: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E52319_01/infoportal/
spotlight.html
For those of you who prefer to read instead of watch,
theres also a fantastic Oracle white paper on Selective
Adoption that packs a tremendous amount of insight into
14 short pages. It can be found at: http://www.oracle.
com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/
wp-peoplesoft-selective-adoption-2576676.pdf
To assist you in becoming more familiar with the various
aspects of the Selective Adoption model and the
technical tools that enable it, Quest will be offering a
12 part webinar series on Selective Adoption starting
in January and will be offering tracks of education
devoted to these topics at COLLABORATE (April) and
RECONNECT (July) as well. Well be collaborating
with Oracle and our vendor partners to provide you
with relevant and timely information that you can use
to navigate this new terrain. Stay tuned to Quests
Weekly Download newsletter for more information. Not
receiving the weekly download? Subscribe at: http://
weeklydownload.questdirect.org/Registration.
Its a new era for PeopleSoft and the future is looking
very bright!