From the CEO

Welcome to our ninth SAP Change Control eNewsletter for 2009.
 
In this issue we extend our discussion of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to impact analysis and change and request management technology integration.

This month we have also released the great news that the Rev-Trac GlobalView online support tool is now available for productive use. You can read about it in the article below or meet with us at TechEd in Vienna or Phoenix and speak with us personally. RSC will be at both events again this year.

The RSC webinar "Rev-Trac® and Your SAP® Infrastructure: How Change Control Fits Within an Overall SAP Solutions Management Methodology" is being run on Wed 30th September at 2:00PM (US EDT). If you missed it last time, please register.
  
Once again the Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks and Q & A sections are included here, and I trust you will find them of value. Remember that if you have any of your own you would like to add, please submit them. 

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

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Integration (Part III) 

Last month we discussed the value of service desk and change and request management integration. This month we are looking at the integration of change impact analysis into the change and request management lifecycle

Impact analysis

Before making certain changes to the base software, an impact analysis is performed to determine what other software objects, modules or business processes may be impacted by the changes.

The analysis helps those testing and/or approving the changes to ascertain...

• The risk such changes might pose to the stability of the production system;
• The level of testing that should take place; and
• An appropriate testing strategy.

Although impact analysis can reduce the effort, cost and risk of making changes to SAP systems, it is time consuming and often inaccurate when done manually. As such, it rarely happens as much as it ought to.

However, an increasing number of change impact analysis software tools are becoming available that both reduce the time required and increase the accuracy of impact analysis. Because of this, more consideration is now being given to its inclusion into the ALM process.

Impact analysis and change request management

For ITIL process change evaluation and various audit reasons impact analysis needs to be a mandated recording step in the change and request management process. Impact analysis then becomes a formalized step in the change management process that may look something like the following:

• Impact analysis required (Y/N)
• Impact analysis conducted (Y)
• Results recorded and impact rated (H/M/L)
• Test strategy defined (Y)
• Development (change) completed
• Testing conducted (Y/N)
• Test results recorded (Y)
• Change approved for deployment (Y)

By formalizing impact analysis as a step in the change control process, the following benefits result:

• Impact analysis is mandated;
• Impact analysis results are used in change risk profile analysis;
• The risk profile and resulting testing strategy are recorded;
• Risks to production system damage are reduced; and
• TCO of managing change is lowered.

However, without some method of enforcement there is the risk of there being a) a disconnect between what has taken place by way of impact analysis and the recording of the same within change requests and b) it not happening at all.

Integrated change control technology and impact analysis solutions
 
In order to maximize the benefits of impact analysis there exists the opportunity to integrate automated impact analysis solutions into change control technology solutions like Rev-Trac.

By fully integrating change control technology and impact analysis solutions, an IT organization can be confident that an impact analysis has been considered and/or taken place and that the results are recorded against the change.

As part of the body of audit evidence justifying the test regime and the approval process, the impact analysis then becomes a strategic component to the overall mitigation of risk and the reduction of TCO.

For more information about integrating Rev-Trac and impact analysis solutions please click here.

Rev-Trac GlobalView – Now in Productive Use

RSC are proud to announce that Rev-Trac GlobalView is now available for productive use. 

GlobalView is a web-based analysis tool designed to assist best-practice use of Rev-Trac and allow maximum ROI by revealing a series of analysis areas via an interactive graphical dashboard.

The six key analysis areas include:

• A system health viewer
• A change control process viewer
• A software feature usage viewer
• An interactive SAP landscape diagram viewer
• An organization viewer
• A complete view of a wide range Rev-Trac usage statistics

GlobalView is a free service provided to Rev-Trac customers. To request access for your organization, contact Rev-Trac Support.

To learn more about GlobalView and its benefits to you, download the GlobalView datasheet. 

Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks

Approval Authorisation Checks

Different organizations have different approval policies and various SOPs which may require that particular authorization checks are performed when a Rev-Trac request status is approved.

Rev-Trac's standard approval approach requires the selected approver to type in their SAP password in order to approve a request status (the logged on SAP user is not considered in this scenario).

In order to cater for various levels of authorization checks,
Rev-Trac has two other options for signing Rev-Trac requests.

For convenience and ease of use, we offer the One-click Approval approach:
If the approver is the logged on SAP user, no password is required. The user only has to hit the "Approve" or "Reject" button. Otherwise, Rev-Trac falls back to the standard approval approach.

For organizations with strict approval policies we offer the
Two-component Approval approach:
The approver must enter the SAP user ID and corresponding password in order to sign a request status (the logged on SAP user is not considered in this scenario).

In order to implement either of the above two options, the appropriate over-ride will need to be configured as follows:

For further information about approval authorization checks, please consult the Rev-Trac Administrator Guide. The latest version of the Guide can be downloaded from the support area of the RSC website.

[ More tips >> ]

Rev-Trac Q & A

Can Rev-Trac be used as a change management tool for the general IT industry (and systems)?

With the use of RT-xDeploy, Rev-Trac customers are able to apply their Rev-Trac infrastructure to processes that cater for the deployment of non-ABAP changes.

RT-xDeploy users can:

• Associate Java and other non-ABAP software packages and CTS transports with a Rev-Trac change request, and automatically deploy them in the correct sequence to any combination of destinations, following approvals
• Specify and enforce sequence dependencies between non-ABAP Java packages, or between these and CTS transports
• Track and manage the deployment of multiple versions of non-ABAP Java packages
• Specify, enforce and report on migration and deployment sequence dependencies between non-ABAP Java package transports, or between ABAP and non-ABAP Java package transports
• Display a range of deployment reports, including matrix-like views that represent visually what destinations each non-ABAP Java package has reached
• See the component list of each Java package
• Configure deployment methods for non-ABAP Java packages
• Choose to use with or without CTS+
• Deploy other types of non-ABAP packages