More often today, a single DevOps toolchain is the panacea for delivering SAP change that is faster than ever before and always ready for production. In a unified DevOps toolchain, no tool or SAP transport is left behind. The appropriate tool is called at the right time to perform its function within an approved SAP change process.
When the change process complies with corporate audit requirements, businesses find themselves at what Rev-Trac calls Unconsciously Competent [see model below].
Unconsciously Competent means:
- SAP IT teams can focus on delivering change, not managing it
- Your change processes are consistent and easy to follow
- Siloes are eliminated, and information flows freely between the teams and systems
- Change velocity increases – speed limits are removed – and your agile and SAP DevOps goals can be met.
Rev-Trac Platinum, an automated SAP change management solution, acts as an orchestrator in a unified DevOps toolchain. The technology calls the correct tool at the appropriate time, creating an end-to-end SAP change process with all the risk controls in place.
Automate to reduce risk in SAP change
Eliminating known and potential hazards is crucial to reducing risk in SAP change. You must ensure change velocity is matched by the automation tools incorporated in your SAP application development environment.
If you adopt a best-in-class approach, and these technologies are configured to meet the needs of your desired change velocity, control; risk is not an issue.
I’m reminded of the famous scene in the movie, “Meet the Fockers”, where Robert De Niro (as Jack Byrnes) introduces Ben Stiller (playing Greg Focker) to the Byrnes ‘Circle of Trust’.
When considering SAP change management, a robust and mature development lifecycle – appropriately configured – with the right tools in the right place provides your business with the ‘circle of trust’ needed to maintain a competitive advantage.
Once Rev-trac is selected to apply a predictable DevOps orchestration process, users are made aware of and can accept calculated risks. With Rev-Trac acting as the orchestrator for delivering the risky changes, the correct process is enforced by either preventing users from progressing or calling the appropriate tool for validation at the required time. As a result, an end-to-end SAP change process is created with all the risk controls in place.
Key Rev-Trac risk reduction features automatically provided to users as they progress changes to production include:
- OOPS (Overtake and Overwrite Protection System)
– prevents transports from being migrated in the wrong sequence (Overtake) or in a way that will downgrade a target system or production (Overwrite)
– runs during approval steps, ensuring that users receive real-time information about active risks. This allows parallel changes to be moved in the correct order to avoid overtake and overwrite issues. - PODS (Peripheral Object Dependency System
PODS identifies dependent objects before a transport migration. This check ensures the correct objects exist in the target system or are included for selection for total system integrity and quality assurance. Failed migrations are prevented, and users can adjust the scope of deployment by prioritizing other transports or changes that may have dependent objects or object versions. - Holistically analyze a release
Rev-Trac’s Release Management allows organizations to bundle many changes into a single release. This means analysis and technical safety checks are performed on the entire release providing a holistic oversight instead of isolated snippets at an individual change level. A real-time understanding of any out of sequence transports or unaccounted for dependencies allows a Release Manager to correctly sequence all required transports before deployment to production.
For more information on how Rev-Trac Platinum can help your organization to reduce risk in SAP change, feel free to reach out to one of our experts.
