The document discusses an upgrade of Principal Financial Group's Pivotal CRM system from version 5.9 to 6.0.8. It involved over 23,000 hours of work over 10 months and included challenges like maintaining functionality for ongoing business needs, tight timelines, and extensive customizations over 13+ years. Innovations that helped overcome risks included automating regression testing, operating a 24-hour project team with global resources, shifting schedules, and prioritizing testing based on business and technical risk. Third parties provided over 25% of the hours to help complete the complex upgrade successfully ahead of a key year-end deadline.

1. PIVOTAL CRM UPGRADE AT
PRINCIPAL FINANCIAL GROUP
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2. Quick information about me
• Supporting the Pivotal CRM implementation since
1998 (technical capacity – administration and
development)
• Service Owner for Principal’s primary Pivotal CRM
implementation since 2008

3. Some Background Pivotal’s use
in The Principal’s Business
• Used primarily to support Principal’s Distribution
organization.
– Retirement and Investor Services (think 401k)
– Specialty Benefits (think Disability, Dental, Vision)
– Individual Services (think Life Insurance)
• Pivotal CRM supports these business capabilities
– Opportunity Management (Sales)
– Asset Retention and Development (Service)

4. Some Background Pivotal’s use in
The Principal’s Business (contd.)
• Opportunity Management
– Managing Pipeline
– Predicting how much we are going to sell in the future
based on historical close ratios
• Asset Retention and Development
– Tracking the activity Principal has with our clients as well
as the advisors who help us sell business.
– Tracking KPI’s based on client size and advisor
productivity.

5. Business Problems
• Opportunity Management and Asset Retention
– Business Problem:
• Managing large lists of information inside Pivotal, but unable
to bring together data from multiple data concepts (tables)
• Asset Retention and Development
– Business Problem:
• How do we appropriately track events where we have many
clients and many advisors represented?
• We’ll come back to these……

6. Pivotal Upgrade - Scope
• Upgrade Relationship version 5.9 to the latest
version (6.0.8).
• Sounds Simple – Right?
– Includes customizations made to the platform since 1998.
– Change interaction/activity management components to be
closely tied to Outlook.
– Client architecture changing to Microsoft’s Smart Client
technology.

7. Pivotal Upgrade – Scope
Challenges
• DMR Queue needed to stay active;
– Business partners needed to have ability to add functionality
to current system.
• Aggressive Timeline (23,000 Hours in 10 months)
– We needed to deliver the upgrade ahead of October 2011 as
to not impact Distribution’s end of year activities.
• High/Sustained/dedicated performance needed by all
disciplines.
– Tight communication was needed to drive through the project.

8. Pivotal Upgrade – Scope Challenges
(contd)
• Take advantage of Pivotal 6 in places where we
HAD to have changes to meet business objectives
– Outlook Integration
– Search Result List capabilities across tables
– Smart Client
– Query Designer
– Admin Forms
• Table changes in places where we knew there was
potential for scope and time overruns.
– Free form UI Design

9. PIVOTAL UPGRADE - ENABLERS
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10. Pivotal Upgrade - Enablers
• Principal Global Services staff to provide
elevated SME skills for QA (and later in the project,
development)
• Third Party Resources were not a nice to have
– they were a NEED to have.
– Tokara Solutions Inc. (Development)
– Softek (Quality Assurance)
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11. Pivotal Upgrade - Third Party Risks
• It was a challenge to ensure Tokara and
Softek had the appropriate access to
Principal’s network.
• Close collaboration was needed to ensure that
Third Party staff had the right information to do
the job – and that they were doing it right.
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12. PIVOTAL UPGRADE –
RISKS/BUMPS IN THE
ROAD
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13. Pivotal Upgrade - Risks/Bumps
in the Road
• How does the team upgrade an actively changing
system?
• Thorough documentation of the last 13 years of
customization is non-existent.
• Business Units’s took ownership of training their own
users.
• Issues with Third Party and Home Office development
delivery
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14. Pivotal Upgrade - Risks
• How does the team upgrade an actively changing
system?
– The team produced and communicated to the business rules
to lessen the impact of actively changing the system.
• Only critical requests would be considered after the upgrade
project began execution (November 2010)
• Those DMR’s would be expected to account for hours to re-code
functionality in the 6.0 environment. (BOES and I Cubed)
• Changes to the 5.9 system were cut off after the May ‘11
release.
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15. Pivotal Upgrade - Risks
• Thorough documentation of the last 13 years of
customization is non-existent.
– The team decided to only document aspects of the system
that were changed with the upgraded architecture.
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16. Pivotal Upgrade - Risks
• BU’s took ownership of training their users.
– BA Lead provided core (non BU specific) documentation on
changed aspects of the system.
– The project team provided live (and recorded) demos to the
BU representatives and their trainers to make sure their
perspectives were covered.
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17. Pivotal Upgrade - Risks
• Complexities in implementing requirements around
Activities/Outlook integration ran over.
– This put the PFG project team in a severe bind to complete
all testing and fixes by a September 23rd delivery date.
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18. PIVOTAL UPGRADE –
INNOVATIONS ACHIEVED
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19. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
• Regression Automation
• Implemented a 24 hour project team
• Schedule Shifting
• Risk based approach to testing
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20. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
Automated Testing
• Regression Automation
– Each code drop/iteration created a risk of introducing new
defects into the Upgraded environment.
– Regression was needed with each code promotion.
– QA Automation using Quick Test Pro created automation
scripts that saved the project $201,051 over the course of
the upgrade. Creating those scripts cost a mere $23,628.
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21. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
Automated Testing
TODO ***
INSERT VIDEO/SCREENS FROM Automation

22. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
24 Hour Project Team
THIS WAS HUGE.
– QA
• PGS Pune testing at night
• Home Office and Softek testing during the day (and night)
• Business Unit testers engaged early and often
– Development
• Home Office staff working during the day (and night)
– BA
• Actively answering business questions from both Dev and
QA
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23. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
24 Hour Project Team
Huddles
• QA Lead met with Pune QA and Softek Staff daily for updated
progress.
• Tech Lead (Robbie Hornung) met with Tokara staff daily for
updated progress/code drops.
• BA/Dev/QA met each morning to review progress and update
priorities based on defects reported and project priorities.
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24. Pivotal Upgrade - Innovations
Schedule Shifting
– PGS (India captive development) QA and Development
Staff changed hours to align with Home Office staff and
provided weekend support for the project.
– Home Office staff was frequently on-site before 7AM and
on weekends to align keep the project moving and work.
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25. Pivotal Upgrade - Risk based
testing approach
–We saw many things changing on a daily basis and we
couldn’t possibly test each and every piece of functionality.
–The project team collectively determined the most critical
portions of the system from a both a business and technical
risk perspective and prioritized their testing accordingly.
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26. Pivotal Upgrade - Inside the
Numbers
• Total Project Hours (Including Third Party Staff)
• 23,224 hours
– Softek (near shore QA) -3,200 hours (14%)
– Tokara (Dev consulting)– 2,500 hours (11%)
– TOTAL 3rd Party Augmentation – 5,700 hours (25%)
– CSS App Support – 2,860 hours (12%)
– Ent Apps Development – 5,494 hours (24%)
– Ent Apps BA – 1,145 hours (5%)
– Ent Apps QA – 6,548 hours (28%)
– Captive Off-Shore (Pune) share of PFG Hours – 4,700 (27%
of PFG hours)
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27. QUESTIONS?
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