Discovering SAP Cloud ALM for Implementation

Paula wants to run her implementation project for the Hire to Retire scenario successfully from beginning to end. However, based on the experience from her previous job, she knows that implementation projects may fail for various reasons, such as:

• changing the scope

• communication issues

• improper planning

• the use of multiple disconnected tools

• an inconsistent approach

• an approach that is reactive rather than proactive

To prevent this from happening at Dreams without Limits, together with Tess Ter, Anna Lyze, Reginald Release and Peter Process, she meets Alexander Architect again to ask him about the project approach the implementation partner Implement HXM! proposes.

Alexander explains that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Implement HXM! uses SAP Cloud ALM Project Management, which uses preconfigured scenarios based on SAP Activate. This allows the team to focus on the business implementation and not on tools. SAP Cloud ALM Project Management, among others, enables the following activities:

• Establish timelines and tracking mechanisms.
• Validate reporting needs.
• Ensure that all stakeholders are aligned on cross-project timelines.
• Adopt DevOps with continuous and incremental deliveries.

Paula has not yet heard about SAP Activate, but Alexander continues to explain the term Project in the context of SAP Cloud ALM. Paula therefore makes a note to ask about SAP Activate in one of their next meetings.

A project in SAP Cloud ALM has the following phases:

• The Prepare phase contains the initial planning and the preparation for the project. This includes the assignment of the project team.
• During the Explore phase, a fit-to-standard analysis is performed to validate the solution functionality included in the project scope and to confirm that the business requirements can be satisfied. Identified delta requirements are added to the backlog for the use in the Realize phase.
• In the Realize phase, the business and system environment is configured, extended, and tested in an incremental way based on the requirements from the Explore phase.
• During the Deploy phase, the production environment is set up and, after confirmation from the customer, the business operation switches to the new system.
• During the Run phase, the business processes run productively. New capabilities can be added and system use can be optimized.

As Alexander has explained, a project in SAP Cloud ALM holds information together in the following ways:

• A project comes with methodology, which is provided by SAP Activate. It contains some timelines and some team information.

• A scope is a collection of business processes that need to be handled together. This is done by assigning solution scenarios (such as Recruit to Retire) with a particular content version to the scope and then picking solution processes (such as Hire to Retire for Cloud Deployment) from those scenarios.

  Hint

  Note that the Hire to Retire process that Dreams without Limits is implementing is part of the end-to-end process Recruit to Retire. The end-to-end process Recruit to Retire consists of the sub-processes Hire to Retire (managing the lifecycle of an employee), Travel to Reimburse (on worker travel and expense management), and External Workforce (managing the life cycle of an external worker). For more information, see the blog The evolution of SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise: The Recruit-to-Retire Process, the Business Technology Platform & RISE with SAP.

• During the fit-to-standard workshop, you collect requirements, which you break down into functional features that are then deployed together.
• Tasks in SAP Cloud ALM are either derived from SAP Activate (as roadmap tasks), defined manually (as project tasks), or generated from requirements. They may contain subtasks (for more detailed descriptions) and / or user stories that describe how the requirement can be realized by developers, IT, testers, and so on, to functionally realize a development.
• To test a requirement or a user story, SAP Cloud ALM provides test cases and defects (records indicating that a functionality is not working properly).
• This all comes together with reporting and analytics capabilities.

After this explanation, Paula is happy that SAP Cloud ALM Project Management offers a guided implementation of the Hire to Retire process with predefined content from SAP Activate Methodology. However, she still does not know in detail what SAP Activate is.

As the scheduled meeting time is almost over, Paula switches to the next item on her agenda. She wants Alexander to list the main process steps for the implementation of their end-to-end process and to explain which of her team members need to cover which steps.

Alexander explains that SAP Cloud ALM for implementation provides harmonized implementation for the intelligent enterprise, covering all relevant SAP solutions for all customers. It supports the design, build, test, and deployment of business processes.

Finally, Alexander assigns the major stakeholders to the single process steps:

After Paula and Alexander have ended the meeting, Paula, Anna, Peter, Tess, and Reginald sit together and discuss what they have learned today.

From the meeting with Alexander, Peter remembers that Alexander pointed out that there is no need to "re-invent the wheel", so he schedules a meeting with Carl Consultant from the implementation partner Implement HXM!. Peter wants to know from Carl what exactly Alexander wanted to express.

As Peter is not so familiar with SAP Activate, he asks Carl to give a short summary on this methodology. Carl explains that SAP Activate is a methodology created by SAP to ensure that all SAP products have a harmonious implementation cycle and experience. It introduces a structured approach for implementations and provides a jump start to implementation by providing templates and accelerators.

To summarize, Carl points out that SAP Activate is the innovation adoption framework that expedites SAP implementations throughout the customer lifecycle.

After this explanation, Peter asks about the relation between SAP Activate and SAP Cloud ALM. Carl answers that SAP Activate offers a self-guided and content-driven implementation. SAP Cloud ALM provides functionality to extend this SAP Activate methodology through project management and execution support. This enables a content-driven implementation for SAP solutions based on SAP Activate methodology and Best Practices content.

Carl continues that customers can select an SAP Activate Roadmap when creating a project in SAP Cloud ALM. This allows them to assign tasks from the content of the SAP Activate Roadmap to team members.

He points out that the list of supported templates is growing. When an SAP Activate Roadmap is selected in SAP Cloud ALM:

• An actionable and trackable task list is generated.
• The content is kept up to date.
• The content comes preassigned to roles.
• The content also includes roles and workstreams.

To learn more about the interplay between SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Activate, Carl recommends Peter to read the blog SAP Activate is Even Better When Using SAP Cloud ALM.