Deltek Vision - upgrades and service packs - hold your horses!

I have a client that has moved over to an accounting/erp/crm/do everything for your consulting company software called Deltek Vision - almost 2 years ago.

Working with Deltek's tech support crew has been fine. They provided plenty of information on recommended server configuration etc, and have even remoted in via GoToAssist sessions to help us with SQL database tweaks etc.

With these types of software systems, they are extremely complex, and with this complexity, there are alway little bugs, reports that don't quite work, etc. On top of this problem, there are alway new features in the pipeline. Some of these new features, my client was looking forward to implement (some new reports from memory).

In my client's case, Deltek took the new service pack/point release out from beta and went gold. Accounting was pushing for the upgrade, and we have Deltek support and our backups as a fall back...lets throw down!

Now look what happens - You go ahead, take a quick snapshot of your database, go ahead and install the new patch/software. Everything loads up fine, and you think everything is sweet. Then IT gets a bunch of calls from users, and accounting, that this report isn't working etc etc. One of the coolest things, was the new version of Vision went from a nice convenient web based app, to a full on local running app - *sigh*. Each time a new feature is introduced, and new bug appears, a previous bug fixed, and a new bug fix is promised in the next patch/release - and so on it goes.

Now this has been going on for about a year, and finally, accounting have come to the fact that no longer can they confidently upgrade their primary systems as soon as they go gold. Result - I am in the process of putting together a budget for a virtualized duplicate of their production environment, on which we can run updates, and test as throughly as possible before giving it the green light (or not) on the production boxes.

I guess the long and the short of it is, encourage your clients/account dept etc, to test test test upgrades and new versions first, preferably in a sandbox/test environment. If they don't have one, let them know what best practices are (ie: give me a test environment), give them your best efforts/milage may vary disclaimer, and proceed accordingly. In my clients case, upgrades have been so counterproductive that they have finally decided to do something about it... and what a better way to do it than with VMs! :)