IBM Rational Extensions for SAP Applications Application lifecycle management for consistent governance

Transcription

1 IBM Rational Extensions for SAP Applications Application lifecycle management for consistent governance Level: Introductory September 2007

2 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 2 of 14 Contents IBM Rational Extensions for SAP Applications... 1 Abstract... 3 Application lifecycle management and SAP... 3 IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform... 4 Applying ALM to SAP... 5 Requirements management... 6 Change and release management... 7 Test management... 9 Test execution and analysis Summary of Rational products and benefits... 12

3 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 3 of 14 Abstract The IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform enables organizations to better govern the business process of software and systems delivery by applying proven processes and end-to-end software lifecycle management. Delivery doesn t apply only to custom software developed in-house; it also applies to the range of custom, packaged, and third-party applications that enterprises need to integrate when developing business solutions. This article explains how Rational software can help manage this process to give you better alignment, control, and efficiency in integrating, building, and maintaining software and software-based systems. Application lifecycle management and SAP Global businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to upgrade, customize, and install SAP implementations. These are major projects that impact the business processes and back end IT systems that enterprises rely on to deliver value. It is commonplace for SAP projects to be treated as an island, isolated and independent of best practices in software and systems delivery. As a result, many organizations lack the process, tools, and methods to effectively manage the change and integrations required. The lack of a consistent approach to IT governance that spans packaged, custom, and third-party application integration and delivery leads to the chaos, schedule slips, and defects that affect the misalignment of business and IT. This article outlines how combining IBM change and release management and quality management solutions works to provide an application lifecycle management framework for SAP projects. IBM Rational RequisitePro, IBM Rational ClearQuest, IBM Rational Functional Tester, and IBM Rational Performance Tester all integrate into SAP and, together, provide consistent governance for requirements, change, and quality management, including defect and test management.

4 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 4 of 14 IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform The range of products in the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform enables organizations to govern the business process of software and systems delivery better by applying proven processes and end-to-end software lifecycle management. Delivery doesn t apply only to custom software developed in-house; it also applies to the range of custom, packaged, and third-party applications that enterprises need to integrate to develop business solutions. When you use Rational software to manage, this process, the result is better alignment, control, and efficiency in integrating, building, and maintaining software and software-based systems. In IBM s 2006 Global CEO Survey, 65 percent of CEOs and leaders said that they will have to make major changes in their businesses over the next two years. New products and services remain a priority, but they're placing increasing emphasis on these business transformation processes: Differentiating themselves through innovative business models Collaborating more effectively across enterprise boundaries to tap into partner and customer ideas about how to provide better service, achieve profitable growth, and make better use of existing resources Fostering a culture of innovation by creating more team-based environments This emphasis on business transformation increases the need for effective governance. The challenge is balancing innovation and oversight. All aspects of the business must be well-governed. This is not a new challenge. What is new is the reliance on software and softwarebased systems to achieve this balance. Organizations are using software-based, bestpractice processes to streamline and transform operations, while improving oversight and reducing the administrative costs of effective governance. Financial management, manufacturing, logistics, customer service, product development, and project management are among the many business processes that depend on software. In short, software enables organizational growth, innovation, and sustainability. Because of the critical importance of software to all aspects of the business, companies are demanding that software and systems delivery be governed like any other strategic process. They want to tighten the relationship between IT and lines of business to better align technology investments with organizational goals. This is the focus of IBM Rational Software.

5 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 5 of 14 IBM Rational solutions (Figure 1) are based on decades of experience and customer success in enabling key business processes that encompass: Software and systems development productivity Geographically distributed development and delivery Service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance for service development and integration Risk management and compliance governance Figure 1. IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform architecture The IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform is an integrated set of tools and processes that address all of these aspects of software development and quality assurance: Governance Process and portfolio management Change and release management Quality management Architecture management The IBM Rational approach to change and release management and quality management offers an integrated solution for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Applying ALM to SAP There are four key components of ALM: Requirements management Change and release management Test management Test execution and analysis Integrating these processes provides the governance framework for enterprise IT delivery. This section explores each of the components of the IBM Rational ALM solution and how it applies to SAP projects.

6 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 6 of 14 Requirements management Fundamentally, SAP projects are enterprise integration projects. SAP projects impact many key business processes and involve multiple business and IT stakeholders. In addition, SAP systems often need to integrate with dozens of legacy, custom, third-party, and other packaged applications. The scope, complexity, and impact make it important to use a comprehensive approach to managing stakeholder needs, business requirements, gaps, and implementation for SAP and non-sap systems. All of these forms of requirements need to be formally documented, communicated, and tracked throughout the multiple phases of a typical software delivery project. Traceability is paramount to ensure that business needs are matched by the IT implementation. Being able to trace from business needs to business requirements and then all the way down to test execution ensures that the desired changes are actually implemented in production-phase systems. In addition, many enterprises have regulatory and compliance mandates that require audit trails for documenting lifecycle traceability and any changes made to a production system. IBM Rational RequisitePro includes project templates for capturing and managing these key requirements: Scope and business goals of the SAP development project Business requirements and business rules SAP requirement gaps The Rational RequisitePro project template for SAP (Figure 2) enables you to trace Goals > Business Requirement > Requirement Gap and conduct impact and coverage analyses through predefined views. In addition, you can capture and manage specifications for RICEF objects in RequisitePro and trace them to determine whether there are any gaps. RequisitePro tools also allow you to link any form of requirement to activity records in IBM Rational ClearQuest, thereby providing traceability into the development lifecycle. For SAP projects, these activity records include Deliverables and SAP Change Requests.

7 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 7 of 14 Figure 2. IBM Rational RequisitePro features Finally, RequisitePro features allow you to link business requirements and requirement gaps to test management assets in IBM Rational ClearQuest test management functionality. This ensures traceability from requirements through tests and enables you to create a test architecture that mirrors business needs. Change and release management Enterprise integration projects go through several phases, including definition, development, testing, and delivery. Team members collaborate to ensure that all changes and implementation dependencies are handled correctly. Change management is a key component in governance, thus effective change request management requires a common information repository that all team members can access. The approval process for the type of request specifies the governance lifecycle of change requests. All of the artifacts related to that request requirements, code, models, documents, and so forth are associated with the change request. A trace matrix shows the impact that a change has on other project artifacts.

8 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 8 of 14 IBM Rational ClearQuest integrates with the SAP Transport Management System (Figure 3) to provide powerful and flexible process and workflow management for controlling the creation and migration of transports across your SAP landscape. The IBM Rational ClearQuest ALM Schema for SAP provides a single way to govern your enterprise integration projects, spanning SAP, legacy, third-party, and custom software. Figure 3. Change request management with IBM Rational ClearQuest Activity records in ClearQuest are used to track design deliverables associated with the requirement gaps. Deliverable records support parent-child (1:N) relationships. A parent record can be completed only if all of its children are completed. Any blocked child record will move a started parent record into a blocked state. This ensures that all requirements associated with a deliverable are completed before the deliverable is transported. Non-SAP systems that are impacted by a given change are delivered using IBM Rational Build Forge. This is especially important, because enterprises implement their business processes as an integrated set of services to take advantage of the benefits of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach. With SOA, business applications rely on composite services to coordinate information and processes across packaged, legacy, and custom systems. Changes at the business process level impact multiple systems; therefore, ClearQuest and Build Forge work together to ensure delivery of all appropriate artifacts to the right systems.

9 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 9 of 14 Test management Test management consists of three main functional areas: Test planning Test execution Test reporting During test planning, you create test plans and test cases. Test cases are turned into configured test cases when they are attached to a test script. This test script can be a manual test procedure or an automated functional or performance test. You can then group configured test cases into test suites to run them. Alternatively, you can run each test case independently. Test execution refers to running the specified manual, functional, or performance test script. Test suites are used to run regression tests on systems to ensure consistent quality as changes are made. With complex enterprise integrations often spanning multiple geographic locations, it is important for the test management system to use a common repository for storing test plans, test scripts, test suites, and test results. Also, enterprises now realize that, just like every other asset in the delivery lifecycle, tests change over time, thus it is also important to be able to manage the configurations of test plans, scripts, and suites.

10 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 10 of 14 Figure 4. Managing test plans, scripts and suites using IBM Rational ClearQuest ClearQuest test management features provide a comprehensive test management and test reporting interface for SAP and non-sap systems. You have full access to the rich reporting tools in ClearQuest, plus you can trace all test artifacts to their associated requirements in RequisitePro. A typical SAP landscape consists of multiple systems for each stage of the delivery lifecycle, such as development, QA, and production phase systems. As SAP changes are delivered to the QA system, they are tested to ensure that the requirements associated with the changes being delivered are satisfied. Project Managers use defect trend charts and other reports to judge release readiness. Test execution and analysis Enterprise application testing involves the functional and performance tests necessary to ensure that business processes are realized in the implemented IT systems. It is important that functional and performance testing solutions can use the wide range of GUIs, databases, network protocols, and middleware that exist today. SOA-based testing: The testing of services with GUIs that are implemented with SOAP and other protocols has become more important as enterprises implement business

11 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 11 of 14 processes in terms of composite services that tie together multiple legacy, packaged and custom systems. IBM Rational Functional Tester handles regression testing for Web, SAP, Siebel, SOA, J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition), terminal-based and Microsoft.NET applications. It also gives you several productivity benefits: Scripts that adapt to application changes to minimize test maintenance Wizard-enhanced automation to speed test creation for the new user Powerful scripting language and IDE for the professional tester Team-oriented parallel development support Figure 5. Capturing a script with IBM Rational Functional Tester Extension for SAP Solutions IBM Rational Performance Tester identifies and diagnoses performance problems for Web, SAP, SOA, Siebel, Oracle, and Citrix-based applications. It also gives you several other advantages: Day 1 productivity Advanced data access and manipulation Automated data variation and synchronization Root cause analysis in hardware and software systems IBM Rational Functional Tester provides automated functional and regression testing for SAP GUI and SAP Netweaver applications. By interfacing directly with the SAPGUI

12 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 12 of 14 client, it provides reliable, repeatable interactions with SAP applications. Rational Functional tester also recognizes custom GUI controls used in SAP Netweaver webbased applications. This accelerates the process of system test creation, execution, and analysis for early detection and repair of SAP GUI and SAP Netweaver applications. IBM Rational Performance Tester provides performance and scalability testing of SAP GUI and SAP Netweaver applications. Rational Performance Tester automatically handles SAP data identification, correlation, and randomization, reducing the time to develop repeatable, realistic performance tests for SAP GUI and SAP Netweaver implementations. Figure 6. IBM Rational Performance Tester Extension for SAP Solutions Summary of Rational products and benefits The IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform provides full lifecycle support for enterprises implementing their business processes with legacy, packaged, third-party, and custom software. This range of Rational products includes application lifecycle management (ALM) for SAP projects so that you can use a consistent governance approach and integrate your software development across your enterprise.

13 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 13 of 14 SAP delivery projects are supported through the integrated functionality of these Rational products: IBM Rational RequisitePro IBM Rational ClearQuest IBM Rational Functional Tester IBM Rational Performance Tester The IBM Rational ClearQuest ALM schema for SAP gives you significantly more control of your software development lifecycle by making key tasks easier and more reliable: Create and manage your SAP implementation Ensure that the correct type of SAP transport is created in the correct client Capture and record metadata for the tasks and objects when you release the transport Take control of the transport after it is released Trigger the import of transports into subsequent clients and capture the import history Figure 7. IBM Rational ClearQuest schema to manage changes to SAP systems Visit IBM developerworks for evaluation versions of Rational software.

14 Rational Integrations for SAP Solutions, Page 14 of 14 IBM, Rational, ClearCase, ClearQuest, RequisitePro, and developerworks are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG Oracle and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation Citrix is a registered trademark of Citrix Systems