beteo ALM Experts Blog

Category: Change Management

  • SAP xRPM and HP PPM – Complementary Solutions?

    Whether in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for PPM or in evaluations for project portfolio management tools, HP PPM (HP Project and Portfolio Mangement Center) and SAP xRPM (xAPP Resource and Portfolio Management) are always positioned as competitors. But do the specific features of these very specialized solutions justify this positioning?

    What are HP PPM and SAP xRPM ideally used for?
    HP PPM has more or less been exclusively designed to be used for managing IT project portfolios. When it comes to integration with software development and application lifecycle components like testing, configuration management databases (CMDB), and business process management tools (BPM), HP PPM shows its real strengths. The strong process engine of HP PPM cannot only control and drive organizational process, it can also control the technical execution of other software components and allows the integration of quality assurance measures and impact analysis steps. Traditional workflow tools rarely go beyond automating organizational flows. With HP PPM, it is possible to systematically control and track portfolio authorization and to include decision criteria from integrated application portfolio analysis. The following also need to be understood and fed back into the decision process: the impact of a project to the IT system, whether or not implementation of the existing system increases the complexity of an IT system, and if the complexity makes it impossible to make a change to the system. What is missing in HP PPM, are capabilities to thoroughly analyze a project portfolio financially.

    SAP xRPM has been built to support business project portfolio analysis with financial data – not for only IT projects, but for projects of any kind. Based on information from SAP BI (SAP Business Intelligence) and SAP SEM (SAP Strategic Enterprise Management), this is readily identifiable by its architecture. The tool’s integration with SAP financial business data is SAP xRPM’s greatest advantage. SAP xRPM can access the most recent financial information from the customer’s SAP system anytime. Additionally, SAP SEM allows defining and running ad hoc financial simulations, and a “What-if analysis” can be run as part of a portfolio assessment. As opposed to HP PPM, SAP xRPM shows weaknesses in process control and in the area of specific IT portfolio analysis needs. In this area, the integration with development and application lifecycle technology is missing.

    Conclusion
    The decision for the right portfolio and project management solution normally depends on its integration with the management information and tools of the project resources. Missing integration means additional effort and challenges for the planning and execution. HP PPM and SAP xRPM deliver unique integration but into two very different areas: application portfolio versus financial information. The article “PPM – Alibi without Impact Analysis” provides further information on which functions should be covered by a portfolio and project management solution, and how different vendors with their products differentiate themselves.

    The logical consequence from the above positioning could be a complementary use of both HP PPM and SAP xRPM. This way, portfolio management can profit from the strong process engine of HP PPM and the analytical capabilities of xRPM. From a technological point of view, the two solutions can ideally marry, and HP PPM provides the technological capabilities to do so. It can also integrate a lifecycle product like SAP xRPM Architecture, concepts and target use of the tools are different. For this reason, the key to a successful project portfolio management solution is to combine both tools and precisely define the requirements upfront. Only then can the combined HP PPM and SAP xRPM be designed, and failure can be prevented. HP PPM properly integrated with SAP xRPM can be PPM at its best!

  • SAP Process Testing – Gaps to be Closed

    Theory says that in order for effective business process testing to be done, testing requirements should already be deduced in the requirement’s phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). But do SAP users consistently test all the processes that are impacted by changes? Despite obvious consequences, this is hardly ever done.

    Process models are not up-to-date
    Many SAP users do not take the effort to document their business processes in order to derive quality measures and test definitions. But even when this is done, the focus of the projects is on developing a running system, and the process documentation is not maintained during the projects and are not up-to-date.

    When changes are handed over to IT operations, the routine of consistently testing all of the processes to see what is impacted by a change is extremely difficult and time-consuming. Because the link between change and processes is not currently documented, the only choice would be a complete test of all business processes. Hence, if at all, processes are only partially tested. Process testing gets marked as completed just because of the lack of prerequisites for such quality measures. Consequences are fatal. Working systems using the same programs or customizations, suddenly behave differently. Components of homogeneous, but even more so for heterogeneous SAP systems, report errors or stop working.

    It is just too laborious, too complex, and is not system supported to completely document systems from the technical objects up to the process level. After some time it becomes nearly impossible to understand why a process has changed or is implemented in a specific way. Developers in new projects, as well as maintenance programmers, are priority driven by their immediate project goals. Long-term system goals for maintainability of the overall application lifecycle are secondary at best.

    Business Process Lifecycle Management
    Understanding over time why and how processes have changed in a specific way is too hard. In SAP development methodology, a typical SAP Business Blueprint and SAP process model do not care whether individual processes that need delivered or already exist should be changed or be newly developed.     Because it is not distinguished in such a way, it is not possible at this point in time to derive which processes were impacted from a change. Because of this, properly defining what the testing requirements should be becomes impossible. The prerequisites for a complete test will be missing later.

    This is not only true for new development. The same drawback exists with support and maintenance programming and disciplines in IT Service Management(ITSM). There is no reference of changes to process objects in their lifecycle.

    Projects need to maintain a sustainable lifecycle management for processes. At any time, it is comprehensible which version of a process was caused by which development project or service request, including what objects were impacted in which way. Consequences for later stage process testing in this way are identified early on so testing can be planned properly.

    The ideal SAP system initializes business processes with the first project. Every new project or service request, roll-ins, roll-outs, enhancements, or bug fix impacting the business process, generates a new version of it, with proper test requirements that are included and comprehensible.

    Conclusion
    In order to not let SAP process testing just be a pretense, it is a must that process documentation is maintained throughout all phases of the development cycle by new projects as well as maintenance activities. It needs to be part of the IT organization’s application lifecycle discipline. It is only in this way that the impact of projects on business processes can be understood and business process test requirements can be defined and used for proper SAP testing.

  • Lifecycle Management – HP BTO Makes It Happen

    This article shows how Application Lifecycle Management can be implemented for large SAP installations. A description of the respective software components can be found on HP’s BTO website.

    Complex SAP systems landscape
    The subsequent chart illustrates how complex a comprehensive SAP Business Suite can be, with its various systems landscapes that can consist of development, quality assurance and production systems.

    Business processes proceed through various ABAP systems, i.e. SAP CRM, SAP ERP and SAP BW. Consequently, a sales activity will be registered in SAP CRM, while then through SAP ERP, the whole preparation, delivery and financial editing of data will be executed. Finally, corresponding ABC analysis will be run in SAP BW.

    If needed, the user will be offered further front-end functions by means of the role-based SAP Portal – created with SAP NDI (SAP Netweaver J2EE Development Infrastructure).

    In order to save investments, operations and development of such all-encompassing and technically complex systems must be ensured longterm. This calls for specific provisions. The required environment and its components are highlighted in blue in the chart below.

    SOA Lifecycle Management

    SAP Application Lifecycle Management with HP products
    For this reason, a Lifecycle Management Environment has been created for large SAP environments, based on HP’s software products. In the following lines, the roles taken over by the individual products and their integration are described.
    SOA Lifecycle Management

    1. Comprehensive support of all stages in the development cycle
    The actual development cycle is supported by the HP products shown in the chart. In addition, ARIS is used for modelling of the business processes and their visualisation.

    Quality Management (HP Quality Center)
    HP Quality Center, which is integrated into the Lifecycle Management environment by means of HP PPM, ensures proactive testing. Thus, the data relevant for the testing is collected, changed and validated at the adequate moment. At the same time, the respective test objects are managed by HP Quality Center.

    Business Service Management (HP BAC)
    HP BAC is integrated into the development process so that information regarding every single business-service can be obtained at every single stage of the development. On the level of business-service, multidimensional impact analysis can be undertaken in all phases of development and test. Furthermore, any related descriptive, organizational and technical objects can be elicited per Business Service.

    SAP Solution Manager
    Integrating SAP Solution Manager into the Lifecycle Management Environment ensures that the appropriate objects can be transported into the SAP systems landscapes. In so doing, the integrity of ABAP and non-ABAP objects of different SAP systems can be ascertained by means of the combinatorics of HP PPM.

    SOA Management
    By integrating Web Services Monitoring data of HP Systinet, access to the data about a Business-Services running in production is guaranteed at any time.

    2. Driving the development process
    HP PPM is utilised, employing all its functionality, to digitize, integrate and automate the processes. The strengths of HP PPM lie specifically in the execution of tasks for which the integration between process and tool are key: it drives all processes and is capable of communicating with every software used in the development cycle.

    Unfortunately, by changing the name of their Software Suite to HP Project and Portfolio Management Center (HP PPM), HP have removed the reference to the true strength of their product from its name. Therefore, the name situates the product only in reference to one Gartner IT quadrant: Project & Portfolio Management (PPM), while the former name Mercury IT Governance (Mercury ITG) reflected very well how strong the product is.

    • It can be used to effectively reduce, if not eliminate, manual or as well as technical interfaces and communication levels. Duplicate and manual data entry by the user may be removed, so that the risk for failures may be minimised and the efficiency maximised.
    • HP PPM combines organisational process stages with technical ones. By this means, it is possible to automate process stages and to include quality assurance measures directly into the process.
    • HP PPM allows to integrate SAP Solution Manager as a sub-process engine.
    • Thanks to HP PPM, all IT business processes can be formulated, digitalised and optimised in one and the same manner.

    3. Integration of the lifecycle data
    By means of integration across the various data stores of the tools, all used services and their dependencies can be monitored at any time. Comprehensive impact analysis is possible. For any change using HP BAC integration it is possible to determine all effected Business Services from the very beginning.

    Using HP PPM as an integration tool allows to reference and provide the necessary descriptive and organisational objects for every tool or user, while a defined process garantees the consistent integration all the results. This integration of the data of HP PPM into the Lifecycle Management Environment facilitates the complete reuse of the process information across the application lifecycle.

    Does HP promise too much?
    At least in the context of an SAP environment, the promise of HP BTO’s marketing messages holds true in a very realistic manner. HP BTO facilitates the pragmatic setup and successful operation of an Application Lifecycle Management.

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