A robust release management process is critical to keep pace in today’s fast-moving, high volume, high-velocity SAP-powered business environment.
As development methodologies increasingly change from waterfall to agile, organizations can frequently introduce more high-quality SAP change. In this scenario, a robust and mature release management process has never been more crucial.
Here, I will look at volume, what it means in terms of release management, and how Rev-Trac’s Release Management Workbench (RMW) can help you meet your goals. The RMW, as previously mentioned, offers a single view of your releases.
As the release manager, seeing all your releases and associated changes on one screen makes managing the risk linked with migrating large volumes of change a little less daunting.
Rev-Trac enforcement capabilities ensure that every change is related to a Rev-Trac Request. Meaning, Rev-Trac knows all the changes that are moving through the system from when it was installed. It even knows about SAP transports created before Rev-Trac was deployed.
So, when moving large volumes of change – such as the release – users are alerted to potentially dangerous sequencing, and dependency situations as Rev-Trac has complete visibility into past activity.
Move large volumes of SAP change easily
The RMW enables releases to be set up in advance. For example, you can set up weekly releases – numbered 1 through 52 – as a placeholder. Or create minor and major release placeholders with different frequencies and whichever release management structure you choose. Upon set up, organizations can develop into these release buckets.
The tricky part is that you can inadvertently leave changes behind without solutions like Rev-Trac that keep track of all SAP changes, their dependencies, etc.
Leaving changes behind is not an issue for our customers. Rev-Trac tracks every change. When changes are attached to a Rev-Trac Request, our automated technology ensures that the change or a group of changes (a release) is migrated following a defined process and timeline.
Arguably, moving large volumes of change could be considered an effortless process. However, readying SAP changes with proper approvals, associated documents attached, testing done, and completing all other parts of the process, can be a massive effort.
Such complexity is compounded when a release includes changes from different SAP environments, including S/4HANA, BW, PI. BODS and Fiori.
Effectively manage higher volumes of SAP change
With the RMW, you decide:
- How changes are allocated to a release, and who makes the decision
- What SAP environments/landscapes are included and/or excluded
- Other configuration rules to simplify the process
A release manager can assign changes to a release. Or developers associate a specific ‘release reference’ to a Rev-Trac Request that specifies its inclusion a particular release. How this happens is entirely up to your organization.
Managing high volumes of SAP change or concurrent changes equates to many approvals. Who wants to approve 50, 100, or more individual changes, one at a time? The RMW resolves this issue by approving a single release request in a mass approval.
All the changes associated with the release automatically move to the next step. This mass approval feature enables SAP customers to safely manage large volumes of SAP changes efficiently.
There are many features and capabilities within the RMW that increase your team’s ability to manage a higher volume of SAP change. Please feel free to reach out to one of our SAP change management experts to find out more.
