On Premise SDLC Best Practices

This article defines recommended best practices for:

• Promoting the EKB platform (application) from Non-Production to Production
• Promoting EKB projects and AI use cases from Non-Production to Production
• Clearly defining roles and responsibilities for each promotion activity, including updates, testing, configuration, and approval

The approach is designed for on-premise environments and aligns with common SDLC, security, and operational governance standards. This approach:

• Clearly defines roles and responsibilities during promotion
• Accounts for environment-specific configuration updates
• Aligns with enterprise on-prem SDLC and security models
• Maintains strict Production access control
• Enables repeatable and auditable promotions

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Environment Model (On-Prem)

Your team maintains separate on-prem Non-Production and Production environments for EKB. These environments are:

• Logically and physically isolated
• Promoted via controlled, manual processes

Both platform updates and project promotions are governed under a single SDLC framework.

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SDLC Phases and Promotion Overview

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Phase 1 – Design & Build (Non-Prod)

• Use cases are designed and configured in EKB Non-Prod
• Prompts, workflows, and integrations are iterated and tuned
• Test data is used where possible

Owner: Business Team / SMEs
Support: EKB (AA)

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Phase 2 – Testing & Validation (Non-Prod)

• Functional testing and UAT
• Accuracy, performance, and security validation
• Business sign-off confirming readiness for promotion

Owner: Business Team / SMEs

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Phase 3 – Promotion Readiness

Before any promotion:

• Change approvals are obtained
• Firewall and network requirements are reviewed
• Production access and RBAC approach is confirmed
• Environment-specific configuration values are identified

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Promotion Mechanisms

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Platform (Environment) Promotion

Platform promotion includes:

• EKB version upgrades
• Security patches
• Platform-level configuration changes

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High-Level Flow

1. Update applied in Non-Prod
2. Platform testing and validation
3. Change approval and scheduling
4. Deployment to Production
5. Post-deployment validation

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Project / Use Case Promotion

EKB supports promotion via a project export/import mechanism between on-prem environments.

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Included in Promotion

• Project configuration
• Workflows and agents
• Prompts and rules

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Excluded from Promotion

• Users and role assignments
• Environment-specific secrets
• Network and firewall settings

This ensures Production access remains explicitly controlled.

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High-Level Flow

1. Project finalized in Non-Prod
2. Export from Non-Prod
3. Import into Production
4. Environment-specific configuration updates
5. Production configuration and access setup
6. Smoke testing and go-live

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Roles and Responsibilities for Promotion Activities

This section defines who performs each activity involved in promoting updates and configurations from Non-Prod to Prod.

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Platform (Environment) Promotion Responsibilities

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Key Point

EKB (AA) is responsible for executing platform updates and running platform-level tests.
Run / Middleware teams control approvals, scheduling, and infrastructure readiness.

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Project / Use Case Promotion Responsibilities

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Key Point

Your team’s business stakeholders own validation and approval, while EKB (AA) executes the technical promotion steps.

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Post-Promotion Configuration (Production)

These activities occur after import to maintain Production controls.

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Environment-Specific Configuration Updates (Required During Promotion)

When a project is promoted from Non-Production to Production, certain configuration values must be updated to reflect the Production environment. These values are not carried over automatically and must be reviewed during promotion.

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RPA Configuration Updates (If Applicable)

For use cases that integrate with RPA tooling, the following values typically need to be updated in Production:

• Control Room URL
• Username
• User v2 Token

These values must reference Production RPA infrastructure and credentials.

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EKB Configuration Updates

Within EKB, the following environment-specific values must be reviewed and updated after promotion:

• Base URL
  • Example:
    • Non-Prod: https://nonprod.example.com
    • Prod: https://prod.example.com
• Project ID
• Project xApiKey
• Project xApiSecret
• Smart Table ID(s)

These values are unique per environment and are required for correct runtime behavior in Production.

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Responsibility for Configuration Updates

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Production Operating Model

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Your Team

• Owns Production operations
• Manages users, RBAC, and monitoring
• Provides first-line incident response

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EKB (AA)

• Owns platform stability and fixes
• Delivers platform upgrades and patches
• Supports complex configuration issues

EKB does not act as the Production run team.

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Change Management and Governance

• All Production changes follow formal change management processes
• Non-Prod is the only environment for experimentation
• Emergency fixes follow expedited approvals

Each Production use case should have:

• Business owner
• Defined scope
• Support contacts
• Rollback plan