Policy for backporting fixes

 

Merative ™ Social Program Management Policy for backporting fixes

 

Question & Answer

 

 

Question

 

What is the policy for backporting fixes in Merative Social Program Management ?

 

 

Answer

 

Definition of a backport:

 

A fix which has been released and delivered that is now being requested on an earlier version of the product.

 

Supporting information required:

 

Before a backport could be considered the following information should be provided to Merative Support:

 

• Business justification for why it is considered a critical business impact
• Why an immediate solution is required
• Information regarding why the customer has not been in a position to take on an upgrade that would have included the fix
• Exact version of Merative Social Program Management this is being requested on
• Is this a production issue?
• Is this considered to be a regression issue?
• Does the project have a workaround for the issue? If so, details of the workaround should be provided
• Project timelines
  • Development phase complete date
  • User Acceptance Testing start and complete dates
  • System Testing start and complete dates
  • Production Roll-out date

 

Criteria to be met:

 

• No viable work around is available
• Critical business impact
• Must be a Severity 1 or Severity 2 issue (Severity 3 or Severity 4 issues do not constitute a critical business impact)
• Immediate solution required
• The official fix has only been available for a short period of time and the customer has had insufficient time to upgrade to that version of the product

 

Note: Meeting the criteria above does not mean a critical fix will be provided. It means that a critical fix request can be raised. The request will then be reviewed and assessed.

 

Declined Backport:

 

If the above Criteria are not met, the expectation should be that your backport request will be declined and you will receive a support case update similar to that below:

“A fix will not be provided as it does not meet the criteria per the Merative Social Program Management  Policy for Backporting Fixes. It is not considered a critical business impact because it is a low priority fix that was provided <X months> ago giving the project more than adequate time to apply it into production.”

 

Accepted Backport:

 

If the above Criteria are met, then we will require the customer to agree to the following:

 

The fix can be provided on the customer's version <X> provided that the project provide an update on the support case containing the following information:

 

• Commitment as to when they will move to the latest refresh pack, fix pack and/or ifix release on their modification version or to the next available modification (or higher) release
• Acceptance that a fully supported fix was pro-actively released by Merative <X> months ago
• Acceptance that fixes replicated to prior versions in a test fix undergo limited testing. The project accepts the risk of putting it into production and to mitigate this should move to a fully supported version of Merative Social Program Management at the earliest opportunity
• Acceptance that Merative recommends the installation of Preventive Service Packages to pro-actively avoid impacting problems caused by software defects already known and corrected by Merative
• Acceptance that requesting the back porting of fixes which have already been released is not provided for by Merative Support.

What happens when I request a critical fix?