Takeaway
Managing SAP change using agile, ITMS, and hybrid approaches can create governance and visibility gaps. Keeping systems synchronized is essential for control and traceability. Integrating Rev-Trac with the toolsets via REST APIs ensures controlled, automated, and secure synchronization.
Managing requirements for SAP change
How do you manage the requirements for:
- Business change requests
- Application enhancements
- Bug fixes
- Project work
In our nearly 25 years of experience, we’ve seen organizations adopt different approaches depending on:
- Company size
- Project plan
- Applications implement
There is no single approach, each has their pros and cons.
Common approaches to managing SAP change
- Agile SAP development (Jira, Azure DevOps)
Some organizations use Agile methodologies supported by tools such a Jira or Azure DevOps.
Agile is the current trend to manage small collections or ‘sprints’ of business functionality that can be designed and planned quickly and tested independently of other changes in the process.
Benefits:
- Flexibility
- Visibility to the expected outcome during testing to validate the design and speed of delivery
Risks:
- Some unpredictability due to untested/unknown conflicts with other sprints in flight
2. ITSM-based change management (Waterfall)
Some organizations rely on an ITSM tool such as ServiceNow for incident/requirement/defect management.
This follows a traditional Waterfall approach which has been the mainstream IT process to manage day-to-day support requests for the past 20 years.
It’s easy to manage.
- Requirements for changes are gathered in the first phase and documented so that develop changes are known and made with reliability to the requirement
Benefits:
- The time spent in the beginning to refine and validate the requirements improves the testing and delivery speed
Risks:
- Changing requirements in the later testing and go-live phases are complicated
3. Hybrid Agile and ITSM approach
Some organizations combine both models.
Example:
- Projects are built in Jira
- Support issues are handled through the ITSM helpdesk
A hybrid Agile and Waterfall model allow organizations to choose the most appropriate approach for SAP project work or support change. Considerations include size, timeline, and resource limitations of the requested changes.
Benefits:
- Most flexibility
- Enables organizations to select and appropriate development process
How a Rev-Trac integration helps
Whatever approach you adopt, maintaining synchronization between the originating system and the progress of SAP change is essential. You can do this using Rev-Trac’s data synchronization integration capability.
When managing SAP changes and the associated support ticket using an ITSM tool or managing project work using a DevOps development support tool, it is vital to ensure all changes are linked and are kept in sync with one another.
This can be done manually but is very prone to errors or can be completely missed altogether. Automating the integration between Rev-Trac and the various toolsets should be done with the REST industry-standard protocol, which includes safely encrypted data traffic and password token exchanges to meet today’s rigorous security requirements.
Benefits of integrating Rev-Trac with external toolsets:
- Rev-Trac Requests can be automatically created
- Rev-Trac and external toolset field values can be synchronized
- Users remain in their preferred systems and benefit from their preferred interfaces and dashboards
- Dependencies can be set up to ensure validation of an outcome or status is achieved in a specific environment before the workflow can continue
- Visibility/synchronization when a change is delivered and completed
- Testcases can be triggered in the remote testing toolset based on data passed from the Rev-Trac Request, such as objects or transports
- Code standard checking can be automated from a Rev-Trac status approval to ensure it is performed with every code change
Rev-Trac integration use cases
ITSM integration
Common integrations include:
- ServiceNow
- Remedy
- MicroFocus
- Cherwell
- Jenkins
Use cases
- Many automate the creation of a Rev-Trac Request based on either creating a ticket in the ITSM toolset or setting a field, or updating the status to trigger the webhook (outgoing REST payload containing the data to send to the Rev-Trac Master)
- Some customers automate from Rev-Trac to the remote ITSM toolset – creating the ticket before migrating changes to production
- Some include sending updates when a field in the ITSM tool (such as state or approval) changes to set the status of the linked Rev-Trac Request. This can also be done bi-directionally
Testing tool integration
Common tools:
- Tosca
- Panaya
- Worksoft
- Rev-Trac can integrate with any toolset that has a REST API
Use Cases
- Integrating your Rev-Trac Request with a testing toolset allows you to automatically approve a testing status in Rev-Trac when the test case (or test plan if that is possible to link test cases into a test plan) passes. Doing this eliminates one more approval that a user must perform
- Rev-Trac Request statuses are automatically sent back to the developer when a test case fails. This is due to the REST API reverting the Rev-Trac workflow to “In Progress” status of the workflow
DevOps/Agile integration
Several Rev-Trac customers have integrated their Rev-Trac workflows with the:
- Jira Epic and User story workflows – which improve the automation of status approvals on both toolsets where appropriate
Impact analysis integration
Many Rev-Trac customers integrate Rev-Trac for SAP object impact analysis toolsets:
- LiveCompare (Tricentis) offers a toolset to pass transports across to the LiveCompare server returning a report showing all the objects in SAP that are impacted by the changes made in the transport. Doing this offers insight into the depth of testing required for the change
- Control for Transport (Onapsis) provides a toolset to validate the technical transport attribute settings needed for a transport to ensure it is meeting the audit requirements. Integrating this functionality with the Rev-Trac toolset ensures these checks are passed or failed, and the Rev-Trac workflow is approved or reverted on the check.
Code Standard and Review
Most of the Rev-Trac customers have implemented a code standard checking toolset to ensure that all coding standards have been validated before allowing the changes to be released.
Example
- Control for Code (Onapsis) (“CodeProfiler”) is a toolset that integrates with Rev-Trac workflow to ensure that before a Rev-Trac Request is approved to migrate to the next system, the coding standards have passed their checks.
FAQ: Managing SAP change across toolsets
Why is tool integration important in SAP change management?
Without integration, change tickets, approvals, transports, and testing statuses become disconnected. This increases audit risk and reduces visibility.
Can agile work in regulated SAP environments?
Yes. However, it must be supported by structures controls such as transport governance, approval enforcement, and audit traceability.
How a Rev-Trac integrations solves the problem?
Regardless of your approach to managing SAP change (agile, ITSM, hybrid), maintaining synchronizations between originating systems and SAP change workflows is essential.
Rev-Trac data synchronization ensures:
- Change tickets remain aligned
- Workflow statuses remain synchronized
- Production delivery is fully traceable
For more information on integrating tools with Rev-Trac, contact one of our SAP change management experts.