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From the CEO
Welcome to our first SAP Change Control eNewsletter for 2009. It's good to be back on deck for what is going to be another very exciting and interesting year.
We have a number of new developments on the board for this year and I am really looking forward to telling you about them as they are released, so keep an eye open for the announcements as they come through.
SAP change control is our focus and so we do spend quite some time researching and understanding the topic. You can read some of Rick Porter, VP Business Development's thoughts on change control process design below.
Be sure to also see this edition's Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks and Q&A sections. There is always something worthwhile from the consulting and support teams here.
As always, we continue to lead innovation in SAP change control, developing software technology to help you reduce the risks and lower the costs of introducing changes into your SAP systems.
David Drake, CEO and Founder
Designing SAP Change Management Processes
Last year ERPexpert interviewed Rick Porter, Vice President Business Development, on how he would recommend an SAP change control team go about designing change management processes as part of a larger change management project.
The resulting article listed the 8 steps Rick recommends and these include:
- Strategy consideration:
Know your basic change control strategy and high level needs.
E.g. SOX compliance, ITIL etc.
- Process types:
Determine an appropriate set of basic change process types.
E.g. Emergency, maintenance, project.
- Approvals and authorization plan:
Consider the change team organizational structure and allocate appropriate levels of approvals and approvers.
E.g. Higher risk changes require higher approval levels.
- Type of changes to be managed:
Consider the various types of changes to be managed.
E.g. Enhancement, security change, break fix, BI support.
- Process sets:
Tailor a set of processes to meet business requirements such as SOX, ITIL and possibly FDA requirements.
- Process design – status steps:
Assign a series of status steps to each process that reflects the level of control required.
- Process design – approvals:
Assign appropriate approvers for each status step within each process, varying the level by expected risk to be managed.
- Workflow design:
Design a workflow communication strategy for each process, who is to be informed of what by when with any action that may be required and the trigger for the workflow.
By following this logical design process, an appropriate set of change control processes that are well considered, designed with risk profiles and regulatory compliance in mind, and support safe delivery of changes into your production systems, is well underway.
If you would like a hard-copy of the article, please contact us.
Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks
Reviving a deleted Rev-Trac request
Once a Rev-Trac request is put into a deleted status (DELT), it cannot be modified.
This can however become a problem if the request should be required to migrate transports.
Any attempt to change the status of the request will often result in an error message advising that:
'Request has status "Deleted" (DELT), no changes allowed'
In order to get around this error message and change the status of the Rev-Trac request, you will need to define DELT as a status within the strategy (normally after COMP) and provide a valid approver.
Once DELT has been defined as a status within the strategy, you will be able to change the status of the Rev-Trac request.
For more detail on this topic, see the Rev-Trac Administrator Guide available for download from the support area of the RSC website.
[ More tips >> ]
Rev-Trac Q & A
How do I add a system to a target group?
In most cases our customers use a target group to direct transport migrations, and scheduled background migration jobs to perform the migrations to each system.
When a target group is modified by adding a system or client, it is necessary to make sure a background migration job has been scheduled with a variant to migrate transports targeted for the new destination. It is common for customers to forget this second step.
For further information on scheduling background migration jobs and target groups, please consult the Rev-Trac Administrator Guide, which can be downloaded from the support area of the
RSC website.
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