Customer Success is a core value at Alfresco, and for this we have invested in people, processes and tools to maximize the possibility of our Partners and Customers succeeding in Alfresco Projects. In this session, Gab will share his 5+ years experience on running successful Alfresco projects, providing a comprehensive but practical set of recommendations, to overcome common business & technical hurdles of an Enterprise wide ECM implementation and ensure continued success for your projects. This preso also introduces the first pilot of Alfresco Developer Support service, geared towards helping customers and partners developers in developing high quality, scalable and high longevity Alfresco customizations, as well as to help you support those customizations in production.

1. 10 things you need to know to have a
successful Alfresco project
Gabriele Columbro
WW Manager Expert Services

3. Today’s objectives
Identify key phases in the Alfresco project
lifecycle
Make the right choices in each and every phase
Prevent technical issues and going over budget
Prevent and mitigate risk upon issues

4. Alfresco basic project lifecycle
Inception Provisioning &
deployment
Release &
distribution
Development

5. Alfresco basic project lifecycle
Inception

6. Tip #1: Leverage the Alfresco SDK
• Archetypes —> Generally available project templates
• AMP, Share AMP, All in One
• SDK Parent
• Inherit best practice behavior based on years of successful
Alfresco projects
• Benefits
• Consistency
• Productivity
• Rapid setup of project lifecycle

7. Tip #1: Leverage the Alfresco SDK

8. Tip #2: Be ECM savvy

9. Tip #2: Be ECM savvy
• ECM is about content, people, processes
• Less about technical rocket science
• What that means
• Make sure you design a future proof model and
taxonomy - “the art of ECM”
• Ensure your permission model is scalable and does
not prevent future evolutions
• Identify content, then people, then how the content
will flow between people and responsibilities

10. Tip #3: Involve the experts early on

11. Tip #3: Involve the experts early on
• ECM experts can help to:
• Identify business value
• Define the ECM foundation design and content model
• Alfresco experts can help to:
• Get design and development right from the get go
• Know the Alfresco specific processes (e.g. Support) and resources (docs, KB,
wiki)
• What are your options?
• Alfresco ACE or ACA certified resources, i.e. partners or community (open source)
• Alfresco Partners
• Alfresco Consulting
• Alfresco dedicated Support packages, like Premiere or Developer Support

12. Tip #3: Open Communication &
lean responsibilities

13. Tip #3: Open Communication &
lean responsibilities
• Open Communication
• Internally
• Dev <-> Ops
• Shared / managed services
• Business & Technical
• Externally
• Customer <-> Alfresco
• 3-way including Partner
• Lean responsibilities and ownership
• Of lifecycle phases (release, packaging, deployment)
• Of developed code (customizations support, source code
availability, e.g. Dev Support)

14. Alfresco basic project lifecycle
Inception Development

15. Tip #4: Alfresco Open Dev Best Practices

16. Tip #4: Alfresco Open Dev Best Practices
• Best practices pillars
• Use only Public APIs (ReST & @PublicApi Java classes)
• Do NOT override / modify Alfresco core webapp
• Package and version your customizations
• Upper case vs. Lower Case
• Risks vs. benefits
• Best Effort vs. Fully Supported
• High TCO vs. Low TCO
• Version Lock in vs. Version Currency
• Dev Support

17. Tip #5: Test, test, test

18. Tip #5: Test, test, test
• Flavors of testing
• Unit —> Alfresco SDK
• Integration —> Alfresco SDK
• Black box / regression w/Selenium —> Alfresco SDK
• Load Testing —> Alfresco Benchmark Framework
• Consider a POC for large implementations sizing
• Risks vs. benefits
• Bugs vs. Quality
• Complex supportability vs. Easy troubleshooting
• Fail in production vs. Fail early and correct

19. Alfresco basic project lifecycle
Inception Release &
distribution
Development

20. Tip #6: Define a rock solid delivery process

21. Tip #6: Define a rock solid delivery process
• Mantra: DO NOT TOUCH PRODUCTION MANUALLY!!!
• Release early, release often
• Unobtrusive packaging and clear versioning
• Automation, automation, automation
• Did I mention automation?
• Clear collaboration pattern between Dev and Ops
• Define a clear DTAP promotion (and back-porting) process of data and code
• D(evelopment)
• T(est)
• A(cceptance)
• P(roduction)
• Alfresco Boxes
https://github.com/maoo/alfresco-boxes

22. Alfresco basic project lifecycle
Inception Provisioning &
deployment
Release &
distribution
Development

23. Tip #7: Size your system appropriately

24. Tip #7: Size your system appropriately
• Know your use case
• Ask the right questions
• Incremental & continuous improvement
• Performance testing feedback into further design
• Consider a POC focused on Load Testing
• Scalability Blueprint
http://www.alfresco.com/resources/whitepapers/alfresco-scalability-blueprint
• SuperSize my repo
• Luis’s session today afternoon

25. Tip #8: Have a replica of your production repository!

26. Tip #8: Have a replica of your production repository!
• Why?
• Study performances in non productive environment
• Run regression testing on a real life repository
• How?
• Automate backup and restore (e.g. Alfresco BaRT)
• Back-porting content, db, indexes on a periodic basis
• Risk vs. benefits
• Long running cases vs. easier troubleshooting
• Crawling in the dark vs. control

27. Tip #9: Monitor. Always.

28. Tip #9: Monitor. Always.
• Even basic monitoring would do, but you should know:
• What to monitor
• CPU/Memory /Disk
• Indexes/db/content store size
• Network latency
• How to monitor
• Un-intrusive (the over-Heisenberg syndrome!)
• Multiple technologies available
• Nagios/Icinga (w/ Alfresco integration)
• ElasticSearch + Logstash + Kibana
http://summit.alfresco.com/san-francisco/sessions/monitoring-your-alfresco-installation
• New Relic

29. Tip #10: Work with us!

30. Tip #10: Work with us!
• Services
• Support (Core, Advanced, Expert)
• Premiere Services
• Consulting
• Developer Support (pilot)
• Tools
• Alfresco Environment Validation tool
• Alfresco Technical Validation tool
• Administration consoles
• Alfresco Benchmark Framework

31. Developer Support
Disclaimer:
Support Services add-on package currently in
pilot phase. Come talk to me if you are
interested.

32. Developer Support - High level
The Developer Support service is a yearly Subscription
based service, delivered remotely by development savvy
senior Engineers.
The subscription is time limited to periods of 6 months, 1
year or multi-year with no case volume restriction.
Customers will be entitled to a 24h response time SLA.

33. Developer Support - Services
• SDK, Developer Environment & Productivity
• Architecture questions
• Public Performance, load testing and sizing best practices
• API usage & best practices questions
• Support in mapping business requirements into design leveraging the
Alfresco APIs
• Code samples and how to customize Alfresco, Share, Workdesk
• Roadmap alignment and Sprint Review (at Premium level)
• Automation of Alfresco installation, deployment, product application
lifecycle management
• Review and recommendations on new/existing
customizations/integrationsCustomization snippets review and
recommendations
• Break/fix and Ttroubleshooting assistance on existing customizations

34. Developer Support - Comparison
Activity Support Developer Support
Consultin
g
Will you troubleshoot my custom code for
me?
✘ ✓ ✓
Will you facilitate provisioning of product
code level fixes if encountered?
✓ ✓ ✓
Will you own technical design of my custom
code for me?
✘ ✘ ✓
Will you build my customization for me from
scratch?
✘ ✘ ✓
Will you help me understand how to use your
public API?
✘ ✓ ✓
Will you recommend best practices for
extending Alfresco?
✘ ✓ ✓
Will you join our project kick-off meeting? ✘ ✓ ✓
Will you map our requirements to best
practice implementation directives?
✘ ✓ ✓
Will you help me to find bugs in existing
custom code?
✘ ✓ ✓
Will you help me troubleshoot my Alfresco
APIs usage if I provide a simple test case?
✓ ✓ ✓
Do you provide SLA on response and
engagement time?
✓ ✓ ✘
Will you own the delivery of an Alfresco
project?
✘ ✘ ✓
Will you come on site? ✘ ✘ ✓

35. Developer Support
Contact me at
gabriele.columbro@alfresco.com

36. Thank you / Grazie!
Gabriele Columbro
gabriele.columbro@alfresco.com
twitter: @mindthegabz
http://mindthegab.com