Website Weekly Update (June 26) …
In this week’s update on the status of the Acuity Brands website project, we’ll be discussing recent improvements and known defects, as well as updates on how the team is managed and the overall web migration project.
Foremost in web improvements, the continuous deployment process will be complete the week of July 17th, which will allow us to implement new code and standard updates to the website at a faster rate. In the month of June, we have also resolved 42 issues and completed 109 improvement projects. As of 6/27/17, our backlog of web work includes 21 active bugs and 35 improvement projects outside of the migration scope of work.
We are aware of two specific instances in the month of June when our site usability was significantly impacted:
- The PIM sites (Lithonia, Holophane, Peerless, Mark, AEL) experienced missing product pages due to a backend server bug that caused the sever to crash. This was the first time this bug had been seen, and the issue has yet to be resolved. We are manually monitoring this as we push to get the PIM sites migrated to the new architecture. We are targeting the end of August for this deployment.
- The Acuity Brands corporate website experienced 40 minutes of downtime due to an internal user error, which resulted in an audit of user permissions. We have since updated our user permissions and do not anticipate a repeat.
As we complete the migration project, we will have more control over how our websites are maintained, as well as a more consistent structure for how our web pages are built.
The biggest change in how the Acuity team is managing web-related projects is in our prioritization methods. Previously, web projects were queued up in three separate work streams with three separate priority lists. Now, we have transitioned all web resources to one funnel of work, and we are collaborating to manage a single list of priorities. This change has given us more visibility into what projects need to be completed and their relative urgency. As a result, going forward there will be a higher level of scrutiny on prioritization. However, we have also moved to a two-week sprint cycle, following the agile methodology. This will allow us to complete two rounds of development per month vs. the previous one per month. We believe this new structure will enable us to more efficiently meet the organization’s demands.
As for the migration schedule, there are a number of parallel projects underway as we near completion of the migration. We anticipate our next major update to deploy the week of July 17. This deployment will include the following significant updates:
- A new Peerless web experience
- The new SalesHub and, with it, the new SmartNews framework
In addition to the aforementioned improvements, the sites currently prioritized and under development for replacement by EOY include:
- Peerless – Nearing completion, on track for week of July 17th
- Mark – Scope defined, initial design underway
- Gotham – Scope defined, initial design to start the week of July 3
- Winona – Pending, targeting August
- Healthcare Lighting – Pending, targeting August
However, we anticipate additional work on other brand sites before the end of the year. Please check back weekly for timeline updates.
Lastly, there is a significant effort underway to clean up a number of issues related to the search function on acuitybrands.com. We have received extensive VOC and VOS, which has heavily influenced our direction. To that end, we have recently hired a new developer who starts the week of July 3rd to accelerate improvements. You can expect an update on this effort in our next post.
We continue to seek feedback on the site from anyone willing to share. Please feel free to send feedback to daniel.englebretson@acuitybrands.com or to schedule a time to discuss at your convenience.
Thank you,
-The Acuity Brands Web Team