Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance
- Check for bug fixes, features (~~new bugs~~), or enhancements
- Schedule time with your staff.
Organizational buy-in and dedicated staff time
End user investigation by just “doing the regular job” in both systems.
NO SPREADSHEETS (never, ever again)
- Use a Test Management Software – QaraTMS or Quack (we liked them both).
Review all findings and give everyone’s concerns equal weight when considering the go/no-go before upgrade.
Benefits of organized processes
- No ~~(fewer)~~ surprises. Nope. None, never a surprise.
- Repetition brings smoother upgrades
~~Complaints~~ Feedback management
- Ask testing staff how testing went before upgrading production and gather feedback for improvement next time.
- Having staff volunteer to help test mitigates resentment if things weren’t “tested enough” before upgrades and offers a way to learn more about FOLIO and how JIRA works.

Stanford

Stanford is self-hosted!
We upgrade over a weekend between academic quarters or during a holiday break to minimize impact of downtime
Libsys team installs new flower version on dev system (for practice), then test system for staff testing, 3 months before anticipated production upgrade date
- Assigns new permissions, configures new edge APIs etc.
Functional area subgroups organize their own testing, mostly use spreadsheets
- Spreadsheets include new features to test, all workflows, bug fixes
Libsys tests all automated scripts and processes, coordinates integration testing (sip2, Caiasoft, Aeon lookup, etc.)
4 week testing period
Slack channel for upgrade testing
Subgroups report problems as they find them, discuss on Folio slack, submit Jira tickets as needed
If any subgroup identifies a showstopper (some issue with enough negative impact that upgrading is truly problematic) then we will delay upgrade
- This has happened! We delayed our Poppy upgrade 3 months to go live on CSP3 after originally testing the GA release (part of this delay was waiting for the next intersession)

TAMU

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