Implementing SAP Change Management

We are glad to have won a new contract to implement SAP Solution Manager - Change Management, Monitoring, 3rd party integration with Remedy and training for this major aluminium corporation.

Implementation of Change Management has started 2 days ago and we will post here the progress and main activities and steps for anyone interested.

Implementation begun on 13/12/2009 with a meeting with the key Basis Consultants and the Project Director. In that meeting we discussed the key topics and made some initial decision to move ahead:
- Pilot system will be a BI, which will be ready for go-live within a week, remaining ABAP-systems (ECC, SCM, APO) to follow one week later
- Initially, release cycles will not be strictly applied, but 2-3 times a week changes will be set live
- The roles of Change Manager and Test Lead will have to be assigned. The Change Manager often comes from a non-SAP, even non-IT background and could very well be directly from the business organization
- The main concern was the changed approach with regards to "buggy" transports - so far, these have not been transported all the way to Production, if a bug has been identified in QA. Many companies do this and of course this always leads almost immediately to problems keeping Production and QA in synch. Therefore, utilizing Solution Manager Change Management, it is mandatory that every transport, which ever makes it into QA, also goes to Production. As all transports of one change request are bundled together, the "buggy" transport will be overwritten in Production immediately thereafter with the correct transport. That way, QA and Production systems will always be in synch, but it does mean a change in approach for many.

Today, on 14/12/2009, we had a small kick-off meeting, where details, processes, scope and plan was communicated to the stakeholders and teams, presenting and answering any questions. The main concern was with regards to before mentioned QA-Production transports, but for now the solution seem to be accepted, pending proof of being usable. But we have done this at quite a number of customers by now, so no problems are expected.

Also we started today to review and approach the basis technical setup of the satellite systems in the landscape. First step, and always to some extend painful, is the setup of all the RFC connections. If you use the wizard in SMSY - it is almost always causing issues, so all connections have to be checked carefully. I have, seriously, never seen a Solution Manager, where initially all RFC-connections where working correct. So we started this and also at the same time updating the users, roles and authorization in the development systems. Actually, you will need to update:
- DEV/Development client
- QA/000, where TMSADM needs additional authorizations
- QA
- Production/000
- Production
So for each client, it is between 2-4 RFC's, so for one satellite installation with DEV, QA and PRD, you will have about 18 RFC's and users to setup and check. So at this client in an rather smallish landscape we look at a total of about 70-80 RFC's and related users to maintain. Quite a pain and usually always causing problems at one point - expiring passwords, etc...

We will update this soon, so you are welcome to check back,

Frank

IT Job Market Analysis now online

...for many years, I have together with my colleagues collected and analysed the various available job market data and finally decided to publish them.

Since 2003, we have analysed close to 5,000,000 jobs, keeping a constant track of the IT job market, of it trends and moments and have decided to share that insight with you. Please do feel free to drop us a note in case of any questions, suggestions or comments:


Weekly overview - 6th of Dec 2009

The past week ending on Sunday, the 6th of December has in general been stable, however with some interesting trends:

The total number of open positions has raised moderately at 1.2%, however permanent positions actually lost 1.9%, while contract positions raised by 5.1%.
Even though the average rate stayed almost unchanged, the permanent positions have actually lost 2.3%, while contract positions have won 2.8%. Contract positions rates are raising for the second week in a row and from 2 weeks ago the percent higher amount of contract rates over permanent roles has raisen from 41%, 43% and to this week at 46% for contract positions over permanent positions.

Monthly overview - November 2009

In general, the IT job market seems to continue to slowly gain strength, but has by no means reached a stable or strong level. Job positings are raising since September 2009 by 10% up to now in December, but of course the holiday season will break with this trend.


Weekly Technology trend review - 6th of Dec 2009

Please find below the overview of the top 20 technologies in IT, the current number of the past week Some key findings from this:

SAP has been for many years now, in our statistics back to 2003, the number one sought technology, It has been growing even stronger in numbers, from about 11% share of the job market in 2003 to today about 15%.
SAP rates are still among the highest in the market, but have been declining, just like in most of the IT Industry for the past 5-10 years
In Germany, SAP has been raising from 5% of the total job offers in 1999 to above 22% in 2009
Web-Technologies and SQL are among the lowest rates, while other ERP, SAP and Oracle offer the strongest rates

More details are at http://www.ne-pm.ae/IT_job_market_analysis.php

SAP Performance Management

....this seems to be really interesting for a number of customers recently. We have had a couple of inquiries about performance management - in different areas:

- Project performance: Project status, progress, work by team member, developments, development status etc., usually based on SAP Solution Manager - Project Management

- Project performance of construction, IT or business projects, typically using SAP cProjects, SAP PS and SAP RPM (former xRPM)

- Service Desk and Change Management - track number of new request, corrections, duration per status (e.g. average time for testing, for development etc.)

- Business process performance, organizational performance, regional performance

- Enterprise Performance Management (SAP EPM)

- Compliance & Security, using SAP GRC

So we implemented some of these using BusinessObjects Xcelsius and put details together on http://www.ne-performance-management.com, have a look how you like it, any feedback always welcomed...

Frank

SAP Project Management - "old school" and how they are holding up projects....

…so in this blog I will write form time to time about current, recent and former activities, events and experiences, as it seems to fit and belong in here. I think it must have been about 30 SAP Project I did and this year, 2009, was actually my 20th year working in SAP Consulting, so there have been some interesting moments I came across.

But it was only recently, like August 2009, that I was attending a SAP Solution Manager presentation of one of the UK's major consultancies, at their customer, one of the biggest UK logistics providers (names and details….contact me….). So the "Senior Sap Project Manager" from that major consultancy, long years experience, but somehow not so much into Governance and best practises, presented SAP Solution Manager, benefits and disadvantages.

What really struck me, and I still haven't really recovered fully, that this "Senior SAP Project Manager" was seriously, with a straight face and all focused, explained that the "biggest disadvantage" of the SAP Solution Manager - Project Management is, that it "forces you to work disciplined". I almost chocked and was sure he was making a joke, this was a presentation to customer staff and no one with a bit of mind left could make such a comment. But no, he was all serious and actually, after chatting with him after the presentation, I do really think he believes in what he was saying there and than.

If you are a customer and implementing SAP - run as far and as fast as you can, if you ever come across such an attitude - or an company where such approach is permitted, accepted or even believed "right".

These days, best practise, experience, common sense and just a bit of brain and reasonable thoughts, you will approach an SAP project in a structured, organised, well-planned and, yes, disciplined way. In projects where we have done this, more often than not, it was immediately clear that only a structured approach with a clear methodology enables you to make a major project successful. You can not jump into planning and assigning 200 staff to task without clear pictures, vision, tasks and scheduling for each and every single of them. SAP Solution manager helps a lot.

And not only in Project Management - Enterprises around the globe realising that with the right Governance, Management, Organisation and Skills they can deliver much more with less, better quality and first time right.

Please do feel free to comment or ask if you feel so, will come up with another nice example soon…

All the best

Frank

Websites updated

…it just was about time for it, the new design for our websites is finished and the first 2 pilot sites have been published in the new format. It’s not only so much just the format, but also the functionality - the sites now have links to YouTube (with demo-movie clips), Twitter, LinkedIn and of course also to this blog.

I really like the new format and http://www.ne-sap-solution-manager.ae went life on 30/11, http://www.ne-sap-business-ojects-xcelsius.com went life on 01/12. So far, feedback and performance is really good actually, so I guess we will have the remaining sites moved to the new format soon as well.

Additional new functions are that visitors can leave comments or post questions about specific pages, they can mail to themselves or friends a summary of the pages of the site they visited and some more related things…check it out...

Any feedback, comments about the sites ? Always appreciated…

All the best,

Frank