An Integrated Agile SAP Change Management - Part 1: Rationale

ITSMSAP
Written By Roger Tchalla

Why would you manage your SAP transports in an integrated/agile way?

This entry is the first out of three on this subject, continuing with the specification and ending with the user guide.

If you are not familiar with SAP Transports and their integration with an agile tool, this blog post is a good start.

Objectives

  • Safeguarding of SAP environments and production systems

    • Setting up a governance around change and release management

    • Minimizing the number of incidents and downgrades on production

  • Keep flexibility while setting up controls 

  • Get full visibility and enhance the transparency of changes in the landscapes

Rationale

  • Transports are triggered from your ITSM Tool (Freshservice, Jira, Zendesk…)

  • Several mechanisms are available to ease and secure the transport management process : 

    • Transport of copies to reduce the number of transport requests created

    • Status dependent import strategy for a more flexible and secure approach

    • Bundling by Project, Sprint or Package allow for better tracking and group actions

Advantages:

    • Transport of Copies are used to create test transports, which are only transported to the test system, but which are never transported to the production system

    • Repository objects are locked as long as possible in DEV

    • Number of Transports in Production is reduced

    • Transports of copies are periodically imported into QAS but do not follow the transport routes into PRE

    • Only the original transport requests can reach Preproduction and Production

    • Preproduction remains a clean environment

Status Dependent Import

  • With status dependent import, you can choose to import only the transport requests with a change document in status “Release for Import”

  • Not all the TR in the import queue are imported

Bundling

  • Bundled changes can only be transport as part of the group, when all changes in the group are ready (package, sprint, project)

  • Bundling is multilevel: A change can be bundled at package level for import in test client, bundled at sprint level for import in QA, bundled at project level for import in Preprod. This make

What’s next?

In the next blog post, we will go over the customizing of your ITSM tool.

Roger Tchalla

Technology Consultant and Project Manager with extensive experience leading SAP implementations using Activate Methodology.

Roger is continuously looking for ways to innovate, facilitate business transformation, optimize delivery and maximize value through efficient use of agile and collaborative techniques and tools.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tchallaroger/
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An Integrated Agile SAP Change Management - Part 2: Specification
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Integrate SAP Transport Management with your ITSM Tool