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Fit-to-Standard Workshops

The fit-to-standard workshops are used to explore the functionality, to show how the solution can meet the business' requirements, and to help enable business process experts on the execution of processes. 

Procedure:

  1. Review and confirm project scope
  2. Review all the necessary Business Processes
  3. Run the workshop in the form of a show and tell session
  4. Capture Requirements to request adaptations.
  5. Capture Notes to capture important talking points or insights.

Within SAP Cloud ALM the requirements can be captured directly in the tool with the link to the respective process. This link is kept throughout the process in order to track the progress.

For more information on how Fit-to-Standard Workshops are conducted, please visit: Fit-to-Standard Analysis in SAP Activate

 

SAP Cloud ALM offers a central platform to access all kind of business process content provided by SAP and partners. In addition, customers can create their own process structures.

The business process content is always the foundation since it defines and organizes the relation between project tasks and related business areas. Based on the business process content, all activities can be supported by SAP Cloud ALM such as definition of requirements, planning of project tasks, documentation of the adjustments made, testing and release from development to the production system including a constant monitoring of the progress.

The following process content packages are available currently. To check which SAP solutions are available from a business content perspective please check the content availability overview.

The SAP Best Practices delivers predefined processes for SAP solutions. If you want to learn more about the available best practice portfolio, please visit the Best Practice Explorer.

 

As a default, the solution value flow of the process is shown. This gives a good overview of the business context of the process.

Next to the value flow there are one or multiple solution process flows available. You can see them by selecting the tab "solution process flow". In case there are multiple diagrams you can see them by selecting the drop down. 

 

Within the process viewer, additional details of the diagram are shown, e.g. description, success criteria, etc.

On the details page you can also see the attached requirements and notes of the diagrams and its elements.

You can also download the diagrams and .svg or .pdf files in case you want to re-use them externally.

 

Requirements can be collected before, during or after the Fit-.to-Standard workshops using the following options:

  1. Create requirements manually using the Solution Process context
  2. Create requirements manually in Requirements App
  3. Upload requirements via excel
  4. Create requirements via API

 

1 - Create requirements manually using the Process Context

Requirements can be collected directly from

  • solution value flow
  • solution process
  • custom process

and all its elements (lane, process step, connector, etc.).

Custom processes need to be set to "active" before adding them to the scope, then they are available for creating requirements as well.

2 - Create Requirements manually in the Requirements App

3 - Import Requirements via Excel

4 - Import Requirements via API

Requirements can be created via published APIs.

Notes, compared to requirements, can be used to document information around the process but no task should be generated based on this information.

Notes can be managed in a separate app to better organize and search for them.

Requirements have descriptions, relations, references and additional Information such as attributes which can help to better describe or categorize the requirements. 

The project team should define which attributes are used and how.

As a minimum a title should be selected. if a process context is used the default title of the requirement is the process name.

In the description the requirements should be documented from a business need perspective. The rich text editor allows documentation of

  • structured text
  • links
  • pictures
  • tables

Since SAP Cloud ALM does not offer a document storage, under references links to external sources or documents stored on external document storage solutions can be added once the requirement is saved.

 

Additional Information offers additional attributes that can help to further categorize the requirement.

 

Context

The relation to the project is given and cannot be changed. 

The scope can be selected, in case this is not yet decided the scope can also be maintained later. Be aware that this additional information is given to related user stories and sub tasks. Therefore it makes sense to maintain these attributes to save time and help to categorize subsequent elements easier.

The workstream can help to define to categorize the requirements using the standard SAP Activate terms. More information is given in the list below. 

Status and Planning

In this section status and priority and priority can be maintained. 

Start and due date can be defined individually. Plus, it can be defined which team, assigned roles or assignee should be the owner of the requirement.

Object

This shows the type and source of the requirement. 

Within this section you can also define tags - for more information on tags go to tag management

 

 

Requirements Options

Once the requirement is saved, the following options are shown for the requirement:

to change the attributes of the requirements select "edit"

Now the requirement is categorized and can be approved or rejected.

 

The following list shows the workstream categories available based on SAP Activate. These workstreams cannot be changed, but once selected the requirements and subsequent tasks can be distributed to the related user roles, thus can save time if SAP Activate Roles are used.

WorkstreamDescription
Project ManagementCovers planning, scheduling, governance, controlling and monitoring the execution of the project. Target group of this work stream are project managers.
Application Design & Configuration

Covers the confirmation of scope, fit-to-standard analysis, identification of delta business process requirements, and functional design of the solution. In later phases, it covers the configuration activities, unit testing to fulfill the customer requirements. Items that can be configured include: forms, workflows, user permission/security, screen layout, reports, master data setup, notifications, etc. This work stream also covers the demonstration of the configured/developed solution to the customer project team after each iteration cycle for customer acceptance and identification of adjustments needed for the next iteration. Note. This Work Stream includes RCEFW deliverables in OP deployments. It does not include Integrations, they are covered in separate workstream.

TestingCovers test strategy, test planning, test case development, and execution of Integration Test, Performance Test, System Test, Regression testing, and User Acceptance Test.
IntegrationCovers identification of integration requirements, integration points, integration approach, and integration solution design. The work stream also includes the setup of integration environment and middleware between the solution and any external systems.
Solution AdoptionCovers Value Management, Organization Change Management (OCM), and End-User Training topics of the deployment project.
Customer Team EnablementCovers the enablement of the customer project team to work on the project effectively. This include standard product orientation to prepare the customer for product requirements and design discussion, as well as key user and admin training to prepare the customer for test case development and test execution. The tasks will lead to a full project team enablement.
ExtensibilityCovers the design, development, and deployment of system functionality that cannot be provided by the standard product and needs to be custom developed. Note: Focus is on solution extensibility beyond the RICEFW that are covered in Design & Configuration and Integration.
Data Management

Covers the discovery, planning and execution of moving legacy data to the new system and archiving of legacy data. This work stream also covers cutover planning, preparation, management and execution of activities to cutover the system into production. It also includes the hyper-care support period shortly after cutover.

Technical Architecture & InfrastructureCovers the solution landscape, deployment concept, system architecture, technical system design, environment (development, testing, production, failover) setup, technology operations standards and process.
Operations & Support

Covers the establishment and setting up of the helpdesk process, case management process, post go-live change management process, & user related operations standards and process.

Analytics

Covers the design, creation, testing of the reporting and analytics inside the implemented solution.

In order to review all requirements, the requirements app should be used. Here it is easy to search for all requirements that need to be approved.

User can also create a custom view to select requirements only relevant for her. 

Within this list requirements can also be mass edited or shown from a timing perspective in the gantt chart view.  

 

From here the requirements can also be down- and uploaded. The down- and upload can also be used for external maintenance if used correctly. More information can be found here.

 

 

Requirement Approval

  1. Requirement can be approved by any team member. 
  2. The Approval is logged in the requirement history. 
  3. After approval, Requirement gets a new Label and the icon for Requirement is changed

 

 

Setting Requirements to obsolete

  • Requirements no longer valid can be set to Obsolete
  • This action can be reversed anytime
  • Obsolete Requirements get a special Prefix and disappear from Reporting and Analytics

 

 

Deletion of Requirements

  • Requirements no longer needed can be deleted
  • This action is Not reversible.
  • Mass deletion is also supported
  • System allows to delete associated project tasks and user stories.