the phases. two at first closely more look Let’s page). next the (see Optimize Deploy, Operate,and (ITIL) Test, and Build Design, Requirements, Library standard: Infrastructure IT the on based phases, six into divided is management application lifecycle article, previous my in noted I As Requirements andDesign Beginning theALMCycle: existing implementations. upgrading and applications SAP new in and benefits two specific scenarios: developing presents.roletool’stake the also throughyou I’ll phases these of each that challenges the address organizations helps Scheer IDS by application Modeling Enterprise SAP the how uncover and Requirements— phases twoALM — Design and ALM. to targeted are that SAP by offered extensions tion solu the discussed and cycle life application’s an of phases six the on touched also I smoothly. more run IT of business the helping in plays it role the discussed and ALM of overview holistic are touchingvariousinthelandscape. points plex and heterogeneous, and development efforts com more becoming are systems IT since days, these operators system IT architects,and system popular a phrase among developers, is administrators, (ALM) management lifecycle Application by Kishore Bhamidipati, SAP Managing theRequirements andDesignPhasesofYour ApplicationProjects Without aBlueprint? Would You BuildaHouse
See “8 Must-Have Tools for Your ALM Toolkit” by Kishore Kishore by Toolkit” Your for Tools ALM “8 Must-Have See (sapinsider.wispubs.com). 20 April-June the in Bhamidipati In this article, I will dive deeper into the first the into deeper dive will I article, this In previous a In SAPinsider article, 1 0 issue of of 0 issue This articleappearedintheOct here withpermissionfromthepublisher, WIS Publishing. SAPinsider I provided a provided I Figure 1 Figure SAPinsider (http://sapinsider.wispubs.com) andappears
on on Subscribe today. Visit - - that includes: requirements and needs the define analysts business phase, this During the Requirements Phase Gather and Document Business Needs in implement. to scenarios by and processes selecting solution or application the for blueprint a Requirementsthe phase, createanalysts business to linked closely is which phase, Design the In Blueprint and Model in the Design Phase . .
Requirements are capabilities that a project outcome (a (a outcome aproject that capabilities are Requirements example, how a final screen layout should appear. appear. should layout screen afinal how example, for describe, requirements Non-functional place. take must that steps example, —for tasks action-oriented are requirements Functional non-functional. or functional be can They have. must service) or product finished eurmns management Requirements analysis Requirements It also includes monitoring changes and and changes monitoring communicatingrelevantto them stakeholders. includes also It requirements. on agreeing and prioritizing, fying, eliciting, documenting, analyzing, tracing, sufficiently defined for systemdesign. identified business needs or opportunities, to and related testable, measurable, actionable, end users. Requirements must be documented, including stakeholders, of requirements ing) conflict (sometimes the account into taking product,while altered or or new a for conditions needs the determining in involved tasks the to refers success, project’s development process throughout thelife ofaproject. continuous a is management Requirements n Nov n Dec2010issueof sapinsider.wispubs.co for a project, a process project,a a for ALM: Tools and Tips and Tools ALM: , which is critical to a to critical is which , m novs identi involves .
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solution extensions. solution SAP IT-oriented the for strategy and messaging marketing global the driving and defining for responsible is SAP, Kishore At HP, startups. and as well as Mercury, Oracle, like companies large at strategy marketing and product driving and defining experience with professional products software enterprise an is bhamidipati@sap.com) Bhamidipati Kishore
Column (kishore. Figure 1 u An overview of the six ITIL phases of ALM; this article Requirements focuses on the Requirements and s $OCUMENTATION OF SOLUTION Design phases INCLUDING CUSTOM CODE
Optimize Design s -AINTENANCE OF 3!0 SOLUTIONS s )NNOVATION MANAGEMENT s )MPROVEMENTS OF SOLUTIONS s 5PGRADES Application Lifecycle Management Build and Test Operate s 3OLUTION CONFIGURATION s 4ECHNICAL OPERATIONS s 4EST MANAGEMENT s "USINESS PROCESS OPERATIONS s )NCIDENT AND PROBLEM MANAGEMENT s )4 REPORTING
Deploy s $EPLOYMENT OF SOLUTION UPDATES
Phase Explanation Targeted solution Requirements Gather and document requirements for software projects, such as a new application. extensions offer Design Build a blueprint to design an application, and select processes and scenarios to functionality to assist implement. Build and Test Code, configure, compile, and test the application. during various ALM Deploy Move the application into production after it functioned well in the test environment. phases. This article Trigger the export of all transports into the production system, and import them. focuses on how SAP Operate Manage the application in production using monitoring tools to ensure that it performs as expected. Enterprise Modeling by Optimize Introduce additional features through an upgrade or enhancement package. IDS Scheer assists with Fine-tune the application in production to ensure it runs efficiently. the Requirements and Design stages. Software design is a process of understanding the Finding the Right Tools to Support problem that the final solution should solve and Requirements and Design: ensuring that the software can in fact address the Easier Said Than Done problem when it is ready. After the purpose and The Requirements and Design phases are per- specifications of software are determined,- soft haps the most important phases of the full ware developers usually design a plan for a application life cycle. You’d be hard-pressed to solution. The plan includes low-level component complete a successful application project without and algorithm implementation issues, as well as doing this upfront work. I equate it to custom- the architectural view. building a house; a contractor can’t just start Many different tools are used during the Design buying concrete and sheetrock without asking phase, including modeling tools or modeling lan- the homeowners what they want the house to guages, such as business process modeling notation look like. Nor can he just start hammering and (BPMN) and Unified Modeling Language (UML). nailing things together without a detailed blue- print and schedule to follow.
A modeling language is any artificial language that can be But executing the Requirements and Design used to express information, knowledge, or systems in a phases isn’t easy. You have to keep track of needs structure defined by a consistent set of rules. The rules are and specifications from various stakeholders. Plus, used to interpret the meaning of components in the structure. A modeling language can be graphical or textual. written requirements often get lost in translation
Subscribe today. Visit sapinsider.wispubs.com. between business and IT. Companies would be bookstore to sell collateral. For the implementa- well-served to find a solution to help with this tion of this new application, the business team process; one such solution is SAP Enterprise would need to determine — and communicate to Modeling by IDS Scheer. IT — the features they would like to include on SAP Enterprise Modeling offers a combination the website, such as the categories in which books of modeling, design, and process performance are listed, the type of shopping cart, and search management functionality that moves beyond capabilities. This new application would need to conceptual business process analysis toward the connect to the organization’s ERP back end to planning and governance of corporate business incorporate financial information, as well as to a architecture. This web-based, role-based, intuitive database to store customer information. solution, which both the business and IT sides When developing the requirements for this can use and collaborate around, assists with implementation, business analysts would ideally enterprise modeling while also allowing you to look at all possible scenarios and talk with other simulate how processes may be affected when new stakeholders on the business side to consider applications are added or software is upgraded. everyone’s requirements. They should look at the With this tool, you can structure, identify, big-picture goals of the project, including goals and describe the mission-critical IT components from the end user’s perspective (in our example, within your infrastructure and align them to the the end user is the customer browsing the online requirements of each business process. And, with store), and break the requirements down into the integrated modeling environment, you can subtasks. It is advisable to do as much planning as design business processes based on consistent possible during this phase to avoid delaying or standards throughout the enterprise and imple- derailing the development by drastically chang- ment internal controls throughout your IT ing requirements later. Business analysts often architecture to comply with regulations and sup- discuss, gather, and document requirements using port your IT governance initiatives. The tool also email, spreadsheets, and Microsoft Word documents. supports planning processes, from documenting And too often there is a disconnect between and analyzing the existing IT architecture to business and IT after the requirements are handed establishing a whole new architecture (see side- bar for additional benefits). You can also reduce the complexity and dura- tion of business intelligence consolidation projects Key Benefits of SAP Enterprise Modeling by modeling, integrating, and aligning views and by IDS Scheer data flows from SAP NetWeaver Business Ware- With SAP Enterprise Modeling, organizations can leverage their IT assets, house (SAP NetWeaver BW). This makes it easier improve performance, and reduce TCO; the tool significantly shortens to apply analytical information to your business timelines for upgrade and implementation projects, and simplifies processes and provide valuable insight to your customization based on business process requirements. It offers: employees as they execute day-to-day activities. . Process-oriented standardization of core business processes
SAP Enterprise Modeling: . One unique methodology for process roll-ins and roll-outs 2 ALM Use Cases . An integrated, role-based, intuitive modeling environment Now, let’s look at how organizations can use . The ability to ensure process compliance and governance SAP Enterprise Modeling in two ALM scenarios. . Collaboration around shared views . The ability to maintain control over the organization’s IT architecture Scenario #1: Developing New . SAP Applications Role-based publishing of business processes Imagine that the product development team at . The ability to optimize and standardize business processes to prepare a retail company wants to create a new online for future upgrade or implementation projects . The ability to model business intelligence structures and data flows, and The business architecture includes the planning and docu- connect them to business processes mentation of processes with several levels of detail. It supports the governance of business processes and promotes their standardization across organizations.
Subscribe today. Visit sapinsider.wispubs.com. Figure 2 u SAP Enterprise Modeling combines business and IT information on the same screen Which data Which system is input? supports the task?
Who is responsible?
Which data Which IS functions are is output? supported by the system?
off to the developers — that is, business and IT teams can connect to existing databases, and mul- may not understand what the other side wants. tiple users can interact and use the same platform. To address this challenge, SAP Enterprise In addition, users can generate reports on the sta- Modeling enables business analysts to draw a dia- tus of the project or of the model itself, and they gram illustrating their requirements and vision can keep records of relevant project communica- for the end product. With this tool, they can cre- tions between business and IT. ate a visual representation (a block diagram) of their requirements — in essence, designing and Scenario #2: Upgrading Existing modeling the flow of an application as they SAP Implementations gather requirements, resulting in less confusion, SAP Enterprise Modeling can also help you opti- SAP Enterprise ambiguity, and misinterpretation (see Figure 2). mize and standardize business processes as you Modeling enables you SAP Enterprise Modeling allows business folks upgrade the software that drives your business. to structure, identify, and IT to collaborate around the same visual dia- Imagine that you are a supply chain manager, gram (a flow chart, for example) during the Design and your company has upgraded its SAP ERP sys- and describe the phase (see Figure 3). It also supports modeling tem to the latest version. You would need to mission-critical IT methods, such as event-driven process chains consider the new functionality that the upgrade (EPCs) and languages such as BPMN and UML, is introducing and determine how it affects your components within which both business and IT can understand. Plus, existing business processes. For example, you may your infrastructure and the models can be stored in a central repository, find that functionality in the upgrade automati- align them to the enabling users to easily access the most up-to-date cally verifies values in a certain field, whereas this version. IT can then work from this diagram when step was previously done manually. Thus, you can requirements of each developing the code for the new application. eliminate this step from the business process. business process. As business analysts design and model a new Most importantly, you also want to ensure that application with SAP Enterprise Modeling, they your relevant business processes are integrated can work across both SAP and non-SAP platforms and standardized. To make sure that these business and systems and synchronize business processes processes are integrated into the upgraded imple- that span different environments (such as finance mentation and that you don’t lose functionality and sales). In our scenario, for example, the busi- or compromise your business process perfor- ness analysts can look at the model of the new mance as a result of the upgrade, SAP Enterprise online store from a customer relationship man- Modeling offers functionality and interfaces for agement (CRM) view and a financials view. The process-driven SAP software management; the tool also contains functionality for administering tools also takes advantage of the standard SAP databases, users, reports, and scripts. For example, process scenario, which can describe both existing
Subscribe today. Visit sapinsider.wispubs.com. “as-is” processes and future “to-be” processes. With SAP Enterprise Modeling, you can get a high-level view of the key processes, and then drill down. This allows you to easily move from a conceptual level to a logical or even a physical level, all while maintaining appropriate relation- ships and threads across these levels. SAP Enterprise Modeling also allows you to navigate to SAP transactions, access documenta- tion of business scenarios and processes, and run queries to see how a particular process would be affected by an upgrade (see Figure 4). The tool enables you to model business process execution language (BPEL) processes in an early stage so that you can then import them into SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI) for enhancing, configuring, and executing.
Finally, SAP Enterprise Modeling allows you to Figure 3 p A flow chart of a business process visualize data structures and data flows in your new SAP implementation (see Figure 5).
Learn More Clearly you can’t ignore the Requirements and Design phases of ALM; these are integral steps to any development project. But you don’t have to dive into these phases without support — SAP Enterprise Modeling by IDS Scheer can help you more efficiently develop new SAP applications and upgrade your existing SAP implementations. To learn more, visit www.sap.com/solutions/ solutionextensions/enterprisemodeling. There you can download a demo that walks through a real-world example of how this solution extension comes into play during an SAP software upgrade. In an upcoming article, we will explore the Build and Test phase and look at the relevant solution extensions for that ALM stage. n Figure 4 p A business blueprint showing process changes
Figure 5 t You can visualize data structures and data flows in a new SAP implementation
Transaction SAP component SAP process step
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