Managing the Successful Deployment and Go-Live

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to outline how SAP Cloud ALM manages the requirements lifecycle by utilizing the change management workflow and deployment orchestration

Capabilities of Change Enabling and Deployment Management in SAP Cloud ALM

At Dreams without Limits, the deployment manager Dave Deploy works together with the release manager Reginald Release. To learn more about the capabilities and features of Change Enabling and Deployment Management in SAP Cloud ALM, they set up a meeting with Carl Consultant from their implementation partner Implement HXM!.

In this meeting, Reginald and Dave ask Carl which capabilities SAP Cloud ALM offers for the deployment to production. Carl starts his answer with a general remark on the Deploy phase:

Image that represents tools for the Deploy phase in SAP Cloud ALM, showing the integration of ABAP transport management for both on-premise based SAP systems and SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It complements the discussion between Dave, Reginald, and Carl about the capabilities of SAP Cloud ALM for deployment to production, including built-in traceability to keep track of deployment changes throughout the landscape, highlighted by a screenshot.

In addition, Carl states that the focus of SAP Cloud ALM for implementation is on agility with incremental enhancements and continuous feature delivery based on deployment on demand.

He then turns to Reginald and explains that Change Enabling allows for all software changes to be documented and for records of changes to be integrated with software deployment providers. For example, the Change and Transport System, SAP Cloud TMS, and the Adaption Transport Organizer (ATO) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Turning to Dave, Carl highlights that Deployment Management accelerates the delivery process by orchestrating heterogeneous transport mechanisms. It ensures reliability by making upgrades and changes a non-event with orchestrated go-live based on release versions. It also increases the transparency via built-in traceability to track the deployment of your changes throughout the customer’s landscape.

Hint

The Analytics tile of SAP Cloud ALM for implementation offers:

  • Requirement Traceability to analyze the readiness of requirements based on related user stories and project tasks.
  • Feature Traceability to analyze the readiness of features based on the status of related user stories and project tasks.
  • User Story Traceability to monitor the readiness of user stories based on the progress of related items such as sub-tasks and test executions.

Note

For SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition the integration of the ABAP transport management allows the traceability of transports. For AS ABAP-based on-premise systems and for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the integration in addition allows you to create and release transport requests directly from within SAP Cloud ALM.

Entities in Change Management

Dave is excited about the options that deployment management offers. He is interested to learn more about the details and therefore asks Carl: "What are the entities for Change Management?" Carl answers as follows:

Flowchart explaining the Change Management process in SAP Cloud ALM, featuring characters Carl Consultant and Dave Deploy. The process starts with a ‘Requirement’ and branches into two paths depending on whether the follow-up document is transport related. If yes, it leads to a ‘Feature’, represented by a truck icon; if no, it leads to a ‘User Story’, depicted by a document icon, which further leads to ‘Project Tasks’.

He first explains that everything starts with the requirement. Requirements are expectations that must be fulfilled from a business point of view. They represent the business needs from a customer's point of view that aren't fulfilled by the standard solution. Carl points out that requirements are, for example, collected as part of the fit-to-standard workshop. They can be relevant for different workstreams such as standard configuration, extensibility, or analytics.

He continues that features are transport related, whereas user stories and tasks are not.

Carl explains that features cover new functionality. He points out that for one feature, Dave can create user stories and project tasks. Whereas the requirement describes what must be done from a business point of view, the user story describes how the requirement can be realized by developers, IT, testers, and others to functionally realize a development. A task, finally, contains a set of instructions and procedures to perform various activities in a project.

Dave has learned that features play an important role in change enablement and deployment management. But he still has not fully understood what a "feature" really is. He therefore asks Carl and gets the following answer:

Paired with the icon of a train, an organigram, and a container, Carl defines a feature as a vehicle to deploy functionality throughout your landscape and ensure traceability via history, an orchestrator of different transport containers for various software components, and a container of landscape information and deployment approvals.

The Workflow in Change Management with SAP Cloud ALM

After this explanation, Dave wants to know how to work with features. Carl answers that a workflow is attached to the feature as follows:

Carl Consultant presents a workflow diagram for SAP Cloud ALM’s Change Management process. The workflow begins with the project ‘In Specification’ from where it can be set to ‘Not Planned’ if it is not in specification and back to 'In specification' again. With 'Start Implementation' , it then progresses through the stages including ‘In Implementation’ ,‘In Testing’, 'Ready for Production' ,and 'Deployed'.

Carl explains that when as a feature has been created, it switches to the status In Specification. Now, the customer can proceed to specify the feature.

He continues that the lifecycle of a feature includes the following statuses:

  • Not Planned: A feature is postponed.
  • In Specification: The technical specification of a feature is performed.
  • In Implementation: The implementation of the feature covers the recording of changes, with the action Assign Transports and deploying changes to the test stage.
  • In Testing: The feature is ready to be tested.
  • Ready for Production: The changes have been successfully tested and are ready for production deployment.
  • Deployed: Confirmation of the deployment of the changes to production.

Carl then explains that, depending on the status, certain actions on transport requests (such as their release or the deployment) are allowed or forbidden. To switch the status of a feature, you must be assigned to a certain role. For example, Reginald needs to be assigned either to the role of the Project Admin or the Change Manager to approve a feature to production (which from technical point means setting the status to Ready for Production).

Note

For more information on the status flow for features, see the corresponding section in the online documentation for SAP Cloud ALM. For more information on SAP Workflow Management, see its online documentation.

Dave and Reginald are happy because this allows them to implement a four eyes principle and to control the development process. However, Dave wants to go deeper into the topic and asks whether he can analyze the readiness of features based on their related user stories and project tasks.

Carl answers that SAP Cloud ALM for implementation offers a Feature Traceability app that includes traceability reports. With the help of this app, Dave can – among others – check if transports that are assigned to a feature have already been released in the development system, imported into the quality assurance system, or even imported into the production system.

Deployment Integration

Finally, Dave wants to know how he can manage the deployment of transport requests through their implementation landscape.

Carl states that deployment orchestration is an essential part of change enablement, and SAP Cloud ALM supports the integration of different deployment tools to serve this purpose:

Diagram illustrating how SAP Cloud ALM offers Change Management and Deployment Orchestration for both on-premise and cloud-based SAP systems. The diagram also outlines the planned integration of Public Cloud services like SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Ariba with the support of SAP Cloud TMS.

He points out that SAP Cloud ALM can be connected to:

  • The Change & Transport System (CTS), hence deployment management for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and SAP systems based on AS ABAP on premise are covered by features.
  • The Adaptation Transport Organizer (ATO), offering traceability to track all changes for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, which is covered by features as well.

  • SAP Cloud Transport Management Service (SAP Cloud TMS), hence deployment management for (among others) SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry and SAP BTP, Neo environment as well as for SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration and API Management is covered by features as well.

    Note

    A list of development artifacts and application-specific content that can be transported using the SAP Cloud Transport Management service can be found at SAP Cloud ALM - Supported Content Types on the SAP Help Portal.

    Hint

    SAP Cloud Transport Management Service is automatically available with the provisioning of an SAP Cloud ALM subaccount. The Cloud Transport Management tile is available in the SAP Cloud ALM for Implementation area of the central launchpad for SAP Cloud ALM.

At the end of this meeting, Carl recommends the following resources to get a deeper understanding of the topic:

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