SAP change control automation software for even the most complex SAP environments
SAP change intelligence software providing instant visibility into SAP custom code changes
I recently came across the eBook, “Digital Transformation and the CIO: A point of view prepared by IBM and SAP” which, among other things, highlights the need for SAP IT organizations to develop systems, processes and methodologies to deliver continuous innovation for the business.
I very much doubt it, but with IT team’s inability to speed it up to the satisfaction of the business to meet the speed of change experience available from digital applications, the enterprise will look very different. In fact, it already does.
High-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are becoming increasingly popular as traffic congestion continues to grow in metropolitan areas around the world. Here in the US, according to Wikipedia, as of 2012 there are some 126 HOV facilities on freeways in 27 metropolitan areas in the United States, which includes over 1,000 corridor miles. So, how about an HOV lane for your SAP changes? Faster delivery of your SAP changes is becoming a necessity, but you can’t sacrifice speed for quality and proper testing.
As an organization’s SAP DevOps processes mature, one would expect to find test failures being picked up earlier in the development process (‘shifting left’). Therefore tracking test failures and the reasons for the test failure is an important mechanism for management to be able to improve agility and speed of delivery. Recently while onsite with a customer, I was asked about a Rev-Trac reporting capacity for tracking rejections during the testing phase.
I’ve spent many years in the SAP Change Management Automation arena. In the early days, everyone was happy with just the concept of having an automated process, period. A method to facilitate all the various approvals and separation of duties required by the typical SAP Change Management process. Today, technology has brought us so many conveniences that were still science fiction only a decade or two ago.
When your SAP IT support team moves towards a DevOps development approach – which it will sooner or later – there are going to be some technical challenges.
So if you’ve got a minute, take a quick look at this 1 minute video to see these challenges and how they can be overcome.
It’s safe to say the end-user perspective for SAP change management is that the change and approval processes are indeed challenging. They’re challenging to learn, execute, change, audit, and so on. Over time as SAP systems and landscapes have become more complex, so have the associated change and approval processes.
In some organizations, the time to complete the approval and documentation process takes longer than the time required to create and test the new change.
I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with one of our larger Australian customers over the last few months. Getting insights and providing advise into their ongoing use of Rev-Trac to help them meet their development agility and their DevOps goals has been invaluable. Here is an example.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been spending time speaking with analysts from a range of firms on this subject of speeding up the enterprise and the conversations have been extremely interesting. One thing I shared with the analysts was our observations of the differential between the percentage of SAP IT support teams that are feeling pressure from the business to ‘speed up’ and the percentage of teams that were doing anything about it.
What do Basis teams do? In the SAP world, they are “above the law” so to speak with their high-levels of security and across the board access. They basically have the keys to the kingdom. They’re the main ones we depend on to handle issues as they arise and we trust them with our entire landscapes and the critical data is houses.