Create and name project
In order to start working in SAP Cloud ALM you need to create a project.
A project is a container that helps in reporting and managing information. A project can contain only one Template but can support multiple products. SAP Cloud ALM allows creation and management of multiple parallel projects. One Project contains one Project team.
Select task template
A template is a predefined set of tasks that helps you accelerate your implementation. Currently SAP Cloud ALM offers only a subset of templates provides by Activate methodology. If you find the task list provided by the template insufficient then you can enrich it by a mass upload of tasks and Deliverables.
Selection of a Project template is not mandatory to create a Project. Also once selected the template can be switched at a later stage.
It is possible to change the task template during the project, but the authorization to make the change is only available to the project administrator.
A change of template results in the permanent deletion of the generated template tasks from SAP Activate and should only be carried out for essential reasons.
User stories, manually created tasks, and tasks generated from requirements are not impacted by a template switch.
Tasks that come from a Template in a Project follow a three level Hierarchy
- Phase
- Deliverable
- Tasks
- Deliverable
Maintain timeboxes
What is a Timebox
Anything that can provide a due date to a Task type is called a Timebox. You can think of it as a Time range of 1 up to N days.
What are the different kinds of Timeboxes in SAP Cloud ALM
SAP Cloud ALM provides three different kinds of Timeboxes
- Phase
- Sprint
- Milestone
Phase
The list of phases in SAP Cloud ALM is provided by SAP Activate methodology. The supported phases in SAP Cloud ALM are
- Prepare
- Explore
- Realize
- Deploy
- Run
Each of these phases has a start date and an end date. The list of phases is fixed. You can not add or delete a phase. This is to ensure that implemented Projects use terms consistent with Activate methodology.
Note: Phase had only one date maintained in SAP Cloud ALM previously. After latest change , the phase has now both start and end dates. You should revisit the Phase dates to ensure they are in line with your Project Plan and expectations.
Sprint
You can work with phases or sprints or combine both timeboxes.
You can add or delete sprints easily. After creating a sprint plan , you can use this to assign due dates for tasks and user stories. The sprint automatically shows in the Past section after the due date for the sprint has passed.
Milestone
Milestone is a special timebox with only an end date.
You can add or delete milestones.
When you add more milestones, they get automatically sorted in a chronological order i.e. according to the due dates of the milestones.
How to use Timeboxes
Timeboxes help you plan your Project in lower level of granularity. You can use the timeboxes to assign precise dates to tasks and user stories.
Another advantage is dynamic date assignment. Example if you assign 100 tasks to a timebox such as “Integration test”. If the milestone date for “Integration Test” is changed, the due date of all tasks assigned to the milestone is changed automatically.
How Timeboxes Relate to each other
Timeboxes can work independent of each other or with each other. You as a customer have a choice to decide how you work.
Phase has special status
The Phase time box has a special status. It is used as fall back for sprint or milestone. Also tasks assigned to sprint or milestone try to find the matching phase and if the match is found then phase information is shown as sub-header in the task list.
Should you align your sprint dates to your phases
Sprints exist directly at Project level. Aligning sprint dates to phase dates is not mandatory but highly recommended. System tries to determine the matching phase based on the sprint dates. The end date of the sprint is considered and system tries to determine from the end date of the sprint, what is the matching phase. if a matching phase is found , its shown as sub-header as in screenshot above and the filters for phase will also find tasks assigned to sprints which can be matched to the phase.
In case you maintain sprints in no relation to the phase, you will not get a nice experience using Timebox filters for phase.
If you are a customer who works in continuous delivery , that is if you do not use the term phase at all, in that case we would recommend you model just one phase as an example “Run” and map all your sprints to the Run phase
What happens if I change the due date manually after Timebox assignment
The advantage of using timeboxes is tasks get automatic updates when the dates of Timebox are changed. As task is in a way “locked” to timebox when the initial assignment happens.
But in case you assign a task to the timebox and later change the due date manually, in this case the task is in a way “unlocked”. This means it still shows related to the timebox but can have a due date which can be outside the range of a timebox.
What happens if a Timebox is deleted
When you delete a timebox, as an example a milestone, the due date of the task or user story is retained and system tries to determine the matching phase as a fall back.
When a sprint or milestone is deleted, the associated phase is used as a fallback to set the due dates.
The explanation of the Activate phases are:
Phase |
Description |
Prepare |
Initial planning and preparation for the project. In this phase the project is started, plans are finalized, project team is assigned, and work is under way to start the project optimally. |
Explore |
Perform a fit-to-standard analysis to validate the solution functionality included in the project scope and to confirm that the business requirements can be satisfied. Identified configuration values and delta requirements are added to the backlog for use in the Realize phase. |
Realize |
Use a series of iterations to incrementally configure, extend, and test an integrated business and system environment that is based on the business requirements identified in the Explore phase. During this phase, data is loaded, adoption activities occur, and operations are planned. |
Deploy |
Setup the production system, confirm customer organization readiness, and switch business operations to the new system. Start running the solution productively. |
Run |
Run the new system; Expand the footprint as needed (e.g. add new capabilities or expand geographic footprint of the solution; Apply SAP operations standards to optimize system use and operations. |
A deliverable is an outcome of performing one or multiple tasks during the phase.
Assign Team Members
The purpose of this task is to assign team members to the delivered roles. These roles are used to filter the view of the tasks to what is relevant to each team member. Once assigned, the roles can be individually maintained in the 'Tasks' view in order to fine tune the responsibilities.
See the in-app help in the Teams view for more details
The Open Application button will navigate to the Team view.
Procedure:
- Project Lead can assign the users to the roles by entering the email addresses.
- The SAP Cloud Admin needs to approve the added users using User Administration
- Additional people can be added later in the project by returning to this view.
Roles in a Project
A project comes with a pre-delivered set of roles provided by Activate methodology.
| Role | Description |
| Project Lead | Owns and drives the project jointly with the Partner Project Manager Coordinates all aspects of the project to meet defined objectives Manages relationship with project stakeholders Manages Q-Gate processes |
| Analytics Expert | Expert in the delivered analytics content Creation of the overall analytics design Managing reporting delta requirements with various functional teams Developer for new and/or extended reports and data structures |
| Business Process Expert | Understands business and processes Perform and confirm configuration Perform testing Drive decisions |
| Configuration Expert | Expert in solution processes and configuration Prepare and lead the Fit-to-Standard analysis process Perform/guide the system configuration Resolution of business process issues |
| Data Migration Expert | Responsible for the data migration of legacy systems to the new cloud system Identification and qualification of source data Cleansing of source data Execution of data migration into the system |
| Education Expert | Responsible for change management Develop end user trainings, learning plans/content, and train the trainers Assure user readiness of the solution |
| Extensibility Expert | Design and implement development of solution extensions on the SAP Cloud Platform Translate requirements into development activities Develop the extensions per the requirements and the customer business processes |
| Integration Implementation Expert | Responsible for the definition and setup of integrations Identification and testing of needed interfaces Identification of scope items Development of setup guides for customer driven integrations Perform integration setup Support cross system process testing |
| Output Management and Forms Expert | Definition and enhancement of output management and forms Modification of forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer Configuration of output management Setup of the Cloud Print Manager |
| System Administrator | Provides consistency across the customer's technical landscape during the solution lifecycle Manages interactions with the services center Serves as the central contact for SAP Responsible for receiving and requesting tenants |
| Testing Expert | Create and manage overall test strategy Manage solution testing, defects, and resolution of defects Coordinate test cycles during the implementation Manage testing activities for quarterly updates |
Custom Project Roles
How to add a custom Project role
SAP Cloud ALM comes preloaded with list of roles from SAP Activate methodology, we decided to give you the flexibility to extend it.
Go to Manage Projects, you will see a new Tab called Roles.
You can navigate to this and click to create a New Project role, you can also give a Description and save.
In this example I just call it “My Custom role“, after saving the role appears in role list with a special icon.
How to use the newly created Project role
You can navigate to the desired Project, go to team setup and you will find the newly created role.
You can just assign persons to it and use it as other Project roles in the system.
What access is given to the person assigned to custom Project role?
At this stage all custom Project roles are mapped to the Project member authorization role.
Assign Landscape
The purpose of this task is to define the landscape for all products relevant for your project. To
every product you can assign a tenant ID to the following tenant roles: “Starter or Preview”, “Development”, “Quality Assurance” and “Production” tenant.
You may need to revisit this task as soon as your landscape is provisioned and becomes available.
See the in-app help in the ‘Project Landscape' application for more details.
Prerequisites:
- The tenants to be assigned are available in the Landscape Management application.
- To make the tenants available in the Landscape Management application you need to import your subscribed services via LIS import. Please check the Setup & Administration Guide for more information.
Procedure:
- The System Administrator opens the “Project Landscape” tile in SAP Cloud ALM and assigns the desired tenant to the tenant role for each product of implementation project.
- The System Administrator checks the URL by clicking the button of the assigned tenant, which should open the starter page of the assigned tenant.
Create Scope
The purpose of this task is to create Scopes to define the project process scope.
A scope is a container for solution processes / variants which should be managed collectively. During scoping you add solution processes to your scopes to define the project process scope. You should combine solution processes into the same scope if :
- The same application system landscape is used, e.g. for sites with own tenants/systems, shared services tenants/systems
- The solution processes require an aligned upgrade cycle, e.g. heavily dependent tenants/systems that are upgraded as a whole
- Serve the same functional purpose, e.g. solution processes per site, solution processes for shared services such as finance consolidation or HR shared services
See the in-app help in the ‘Processes' application for more details.
Procedure:
- Open the ‘Processes' application and starts the ‘edit' mode.
- Select the ‘Manage Scopes' option to add a new scope for the Project with a unique name.
- Choose the newly created scope and baseline country/region and then selects the business processes that are part of the scope.
- Save the selection when completed. The scope can be adjusted at any time.
How to scope country versions?
Depending on how your project is set up there are different ways how to work with country specific processes/localization topics in SAP Cloud ALM.
If you plan a multi-country rollout you have two basic options:
1.) Recommended: creating a scope per functional area and selecting all processes just once with a selected “baseline country version”. You can add cross country as well as country-specific requirements to the same baseline process.
Advantages:
- you have fewer processes in your scope which makes follow up activities easier to handle such as adding requirements, searching for process related documents, adding test cases.
- All process related requirements can be found under one process.
Disadvantage:
- You might miss out on some country specific documentation and automated test cases
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2.) Select all relevant country versions and add them to your scope.
Advantages:
- You get all country specific automated test cases if they are available
- You can manage country specific roll outs and testing more easily
Disadvantage:
- It will be harder to find requirements and documentation related to the same process as it is spread across multiple processes.
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Or an optional mixture:
You can select a baseline country version plus selecting only some specific country processes which have extreme differences. Here you need to carefully select the additional countries.