Discovering SAP Cloud ALM

SAP Cloud ALM is an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution supporting customers to implement and operate their cloud or hybrid solutions.

SAP Cloud ALM aids in the implementation and operation of intelligent cloud-based and hybrid business solutions. You can benefit from a ready-to-use, native cloud solution that's designed to serve as the central entry point for managing your SAP landscape. This solution offers content-driven guided implementation and highly automated operations.

SAP Cloud ALM is included in your cloud subscription containing Enterprise Support, cloud edition and in SAP Enterprise Support:

• SAP Cloud ALM is cloud-native and open.
• SAP Cloud ALM manages the application lifecycle for the Intelligent Suite.
• SAP Cloud ALM not only manages cloud solutions but also hybrid solutions (a combination of on-premise and cloud).
• SAP Cloud ALM can be provisioned and consumed immediately.
• SAP Cloud ALM is an application that runs on SAP Business Technology Platform and is optimized for SAP HANA.
• SAP Cloud ALM is an ALM solution that's optimized for cost efficiency.

SAP Cloud ALM is a cloud service available for all cloud customers of SAP. It's included in your cloud subscription – you own it already! Benefits are three-fold:

• Accelerate time-to-value by shortening the implementation project.
• Safeguard business continuity and hence reducing cost of downtime.
• Reduce cost of implementation and operations of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Application Lifecycle Management Mission is to help customers implement solutions faster and operate them without disruption.

It assists with the Implementation tasks from:

• Designing business processes.
• Building the configuration.
• Testing the quality.
• Deploying to production.

And for Operations, SAP Cloud ALM support the activities of:

• Detecting incidents.
• Analyzing their root-cause.
• Correcting the problems.
• Automating recurring problem resolutions.

Core Capabilities of Service are:

• Agree, set-up and monitor the service delivery (prepare).
• Conduct the service delivery process end-2-end (deliver).
• Share the service results and outcomes (report).
• Assign, execute and track issues & actions (follow-up).

Major information about operations in SAP Cloud ALM are:

• SAP Cloud ALM does not stop after implementing your SAP SuccessFactors solution. It cares about operating it as well.
• SAP Cloud ALM empowers you to understand health of SAP business solutions and to react on it if required:
  • SAP Cloud ALM monitors multiple aspects to detect anomalies as soon as possible (Business Process Monitoring, Integration & Exception Monitoring, …).
  • SAP Cloud ALM allows you to conduct root cause analysis on different levels.
  • SAP Cloud ALM enables customer to increase operation efficiency by automating corrective actions.
  • SAP Cloud ALM helps to predict anomalies in business process and application operation by event correlation and learning out of the collected data.

Further details about the services:

Prepare

• See the Calendar for scheduled Services.
• Review previous delivered Services.
• Collaborate with SAP Service Delivery Team.
• Work on Agenda and Scope.
• Compound Preparation Tasks.
• Share Status.

Deliver

• Accomplish the Service Delivery Process End-2-End.
• Collaborate with SAP during Service Delivery.
• See current status of Service Delivery.

Share

• Receive Management Summary of the delivered Service.
• Receive detailed Service Results of the delivered Service.
• Easy navigation and drill down within the Service Result Document.
• Share the Document with your Employees.
• Mark favorites to highlight sections which are important to you.

Follow-Up

• Receive Issues & Actions in a digitized format.
• Assign Issues & Actions to employees to follow-up.
• Collaborate with SAP.
• Report and Track status.
• Create your own Issues & Actions.

Three tiers of SAP Transformation Suite:

• Signavio
• SAP Cloud ALM
• Tricentis

SAP Cloud ALM is cleaned up. BPMN modeling and test automation are handled in best of breed tools.

Design: Onboarding, Project Setup and Fit-to-Standard Execution:

• Invite users and assign them to your SAP Activate Roles and Teams.
• Structure your project timelines with Phases, Sprints, and Milestones.
• Select SAP Activate Methodology Roadmap per SAP Product and benefit from SAP Best Practice Content and Intelligent Enterprise Scenarios.
• Manage your Fit-to-Standard Workshops in SAP Cloud ALM.
• Create own Processes with integrated process modeling capabilities.

Build: Project Management and Project Execution:

• Manage your project using agile methodologies with Sprints, User Stories, and Story Points.
• Consume methodology tasks with accelerators from SAP Activate roadmaps.
• Visualize dependencies in a Gantt-Chart View.
• Break down Requirements in User Stories and Tasks.
• Distribute work using subtasks and assign to other teams or project members.
• Track project and solution readiness using integrated analytics.

Test: Test Planning & Orchestration and Test Execution:

• Prepare your Tests for Manual and Automated Test Cases
• Leverage SAP delivered standard Test Cases
• Prepare Tests on Process based Requirements
• Plan and structure your tests execution using Test Plans
• Execute manual, step based test cases
• Integration of Test Automation providers - SAP S/4HANA Test Automation Tool, Tricentis, Test Automation, Open API for other test automation providers.
• Manage defects in Test Execution.

Deploy: Change Enablement and Deployment Orchestration:

• Document all software changes.
• Ensure traceability & audit trails.
• Deliver software using features across solution and project landscape.
• Plan your deployments using deployment plans and releases.
• Orchestrating different deployment mechanisms and ensure consistent software delivery to production.

The requirement driven implementation model illustrates the "document" flow from the design phase with the scope definition (notes, documents, task templates from SAP Activate) to the build phase where requirements are created, refined in user stories and/or tasks and then bundled to features to be developed. Each requirement needs test cases created, planed, and executed (after development) in the test phase.

If all needed tests are ok, the feature can be deployed, and the requirement can be confirmed in the deploy phase. Over all activities several analytics and traceability reports can help to manage and track the project.

Upcoming Features can be found in SAP Roadmap Explorer.

This figure illustrates the End-to-End process flow that is used and detailed in the following exercises step by step.