Initiating an SAP DevOps journey may be daunting, considering the options and outcomes that drive your journey speed, plan, and deliverables. Fortunately, some companies have forged the DevOps path that can provide insights into which stones to kick and holes to fill.
In this blog, I will provide an overview of a company well on the way to achieving its DevOps objectives using Rev-Trac Platinum, the SAP DevOps Orchestration Platform. For privacy and security reasons, I can’t reveal the organization’s details, but I will use ‘Acme” as the company name.
When Acme first evaluated its current production support change velocity, change outage impacts, and audit requirements, they came up short due to the limited capabilities of the existing SAP change management processes. It decided to address this core issue before stepping off into its DevOps journey.
After implementing Rev-Trac for support and project work, Acme immediately improved the change velocity, change impact (lower production issues after transport migrations) and change status visibility.
Realize SAP DevOps Goals
Acme’s next objective on the path to DevOps success was to integrate change testing automation management into the workflow and orchestrate the two applications to improve the productivity of testing changes.
They first collected a list of outcomes to ensure all impacted teams were on board with the plan. The outcomes included:
- Consistent and automated testing outcomes
- Ease of use for wide adoption
- Data exchange information is reflected in both applications
Engaging resources familiar with each application was critical for a successful outcome. They had some small hurdles to overcome, but they were able to implement this integration successfully and achieve a great milestone on their journey.
While the testing automation project was underway, Acme wanted to involve a different team to coordinate the ITSM companywide change control with the specific SAP changes.
It required another integration between Rev-Trac and their ITSM application. This integration created a new ITSM ticket for any change that was in a status that was planned for production, sending the required data values to the ITSM ticket for review by the Change Control Board.
A specific improvement Acme implemented in its DevOps journey was automating code review. Doing this ensured a consistent review and prevented the code from migrating if it failed quality checks early in the change workflow. Once these checks pass, the workflow allows the changes to be approved to migrate through the landscape. They knocked the ball out of the court with this quality improvement!
The final improvement involved Rev-Trac’s orchestration of change intake planning. This orchestration automates the creation of a Rev-Trac change only when the change intake application has been reviewed and approved to begin development.
The automation did not only create a new Rev-Trac request. The request changes status as it is approved through its workflow. These statuses are sent back to the change intake request, keeping the requestor aware of the status of the requested change.
The Bottom Line
Rev-Trac not only solved their basic change management process challenges but also brought a new level of cross-application orchestration and improved outcomes and productivity.
Are you ready to kick-start your SAP DevOps journey? Contact one of our SAP change management experts to see how Rev-Trac can help you.
