An Integrated Agile SAP Change Management - Part 2: Specification

What would it take to manage your SAP transports in an integrated/agile way?

This entry is the second part on the subject, starting with the rationale, and ending with an user guide.

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

Types of Changes

In SAP Solution Manager, we have ‘Transaction types’ that represent a specific type of behavior needed to manage the changes: Normal Change, Urgent Change, Standard Change… For simplicity sake, we will consider that only one type of workflow is needed/configured. We will be using checkboxes and dropdown lists to manage the path and behavior of the transports.

Resources

Requester / Functional team member

• Create the Changes

• Fill in the required information

• Fill in the required involved teams and partners

Team leader

• Create the transport requests and tasks for the developers/functional team members

• Is responsible of the supervision of the development/customizing

• Provide a global vision of the development and customizing

Test leader

• Is responsible of the tests

• Provides a test report

Transport Manager

• Perform the import into preproduction and production

• Ensures that the import is performed without any errors

Production manager

• Is responsible of Preproduction & Production environments

• Authorizes the imports into Preproduction & Production

Fields

Project

Sprint

Package

Priority

Urgency

Impact

Workflows - introduction

01. Open

A representative of SAP DEV, the flow team or the functional team can either:

• Reject the Normal change if the development is not required anymore

• Require the Development leader, flow team leader or the functional team leader to perform the change by changing the ticket status to "02. In Development/Customizing". 

02. In Development / Customizing

At this step, the Urgent Change can still be rejected. If transport requests are created and contain changed objects, the Normal Change cannot be rejected anymore.

The development leader/flow team leader/functional leader creates the required transport requests and the corresponding tasks. 

NB: TR and tasks creation is only available in this status.

The developers/functional team members will perform the changes in the development system. The tasks have to be released when the development/customizing was performed.

Then the development leader/flow team leader/functional leader asks the test leader to perform some tests in quality environment by changing the status to "03. Test in progress in QUAL".

The transport requests of the ticket will be released then imported in the background when the status reaches

03. Test in progress in QUAL

03. Test in progress in QUAL

The test leader is automatically notified by email in order performs the tests. 

• In case of unsuccessful results, the ticket is sent back to development

• Otherwise, Integration test leader confirms successful tests in quality environment by changing the status to "04. Successfully tested in QUAL"

04. Successfully tested in QUAL

The transport Manager is automatically notified by an email in order to trigger the import of the Urgent Change.

By changing the status to "05. Test in progress in Preprod" the transport requests will be imported in Preproduction environment.

The import is triggered automatically in the background at status change.

05. Test in progress in Preprod

If the import was successful, the status of the change document is changed to "05. Test in progress in Preprod". 

The NRT leader is automatically notified by email in order to perform the NRT.

• Once the Test leader has performed successfully the tests, a confirmation of successful tests in Preproduction is triggered by changing the status to "06. Tested for production import"

• If the tests failed in preproduction, the Normal Change can be sent back to development

06. Tested for production import

The tests in preproduction environments were correctly performed and the Production manager is automatically notified.

The Production Manager can then authorize the Urgent Change to be imported into Production. He has to take into account the releases planning and the potential conflicts. 

07. Authorized for production

The production Manager authorized the import into production.

The IT Operator, by changing the status of the ticket to "08. Imported into production", performs the import into production.

The import is triggered automatically in the background.

08. Imported into Production

The Urgent was imported into production and the production manager is automatically notified.

• If required, the change can still go back into development and perform additional corrective actions.

• Otherwise, the Urgent has to be closed.

09. Closed

The Change is closed and cannot be modified anymore. 

10. Rejected

The Change is rejected.

The document cannot be changed anymore.

Authorizations

Change Manager: Can authorize actions at specific statuses

Developer: Can create transports, tasks

Tester: Validate tests

IT Operator: Can execute actions that move transports to preprod or Prod

Admin: All actions are possible

Customizing

What’s next?

In the next blog post, we will go in check the user manual for transports managed from your ITSM tool.