Enable a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM- Webinar Summary
Approach for this Blog
In this blog I have documented the summary from the Virtual Webinar Series on Enable a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM.
Summary of sessions:
Session 1 – Maximizing Clean Core Benefits with SAP Cloud ALM- 20th November 2024Session 2 – Efficiently Managing RISE with SAP Projects: A Clean Core Approach Using SAP Cloud ALM-21st November 2024Session 3 – Streamlining Business Processes While Preserving a Clean Core- 26th November 2024Session 4 – Ensuring a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM: Test, Change, and Deployment Management- 28th November 2024Session 5 – Operational Excellence with SAP Cloud ALM: Driving the Clean Core Initiative – 3rd December 2024New & Planned offerings on the Cloud ALM Roadmap for clean core adoptionPlanned Future Roadmap to enhance Cloud ALM capability
Session 1 – Maximizing Clean Core Benefits with SAP Cloud ALM- 20th November 2024
What is Clean Core?
Clean core is a journey, which needs to be adapted by following a step-by-step approach.
Greenfield
Unique opportunity to follow clean core principles right from beginning.Establish strong governance.
Brownfield
Establish clean core principle for every new deployment.Plan your journey towards a clean core.
Benefits of Clean Core
Case Study of Hitachi
Challenges
9000 customization in legacy SAP ERP applicationManage ERP version upgrade cycle.
Value Driven Results
Adopting fit to standard approach has allowed Hitachi to reduce core system customization from more than 9000 to 22.Developments are now reused across the landscape.A drastically less customized landscape has seen update cycle reduced from every five years to yearly.
The impact
94% reduction in customization footprint18x handling of solution updates100% of on-site maintenance requirements eliminated
Business Transformation and clean core
How each dimension of Cloud ALM supports clean core
How project management can be used for clean core.
As clean core is a journey, it’s an ongoing process and cannot be adapted at once.We need to make sure we are following the Best practices and adapting the SAP Activate methodologies to be agile compliant in our clean core journey.Define teams and roles.Define Timeboxes and releases.Adapt Q-Gates ManagementOverall dashboarding for tracking the project progress.
You can find the E2E project management details in my blog which was demonstrated in the webinar. https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-members/all-the-buzz-about-sap-cloud-alm/ba-p/13881779
Rise with SAP Methodology Dashboard
It fetches the data from multiple sources, Signavio, leanIx, Q-gates , readiness report etc.Supports in making decisions which steps to be taken in what sequence for clean core adaptionBridging the gap from analysis to execution by task creation and distribution among project team
Session 2 – Efficiently Managing RISE with SAP Projects: A Clean Core Approach Using SAP Cloud ALM-21st November 2024
What is Clean Core Functionality?
Contains tasks to learn more about clean core methodologyClean core success plan is a subset of 118 tasks currentlyCleanup unused codeTo be as close to standard
What is a Q-gate?
Predefined milestones where a project is audited to check, if it meets the necessary criteria move to next phase.Checkpoints for the current defined project task
What is the importance of Q-gates in clean core adaption?
To tack cross project clean core activities.
Automatically generated Q-gates in clean core adaption
Project Setup and roadmap selection for clean core adaption
There are three ways to manage clean core tasks
As a part of implementation projectAs a part of system conversionIn a consolidation project
For all the variants Q-gates are automatically created as per the selected roadmap. Selecting a roadmap while creating a project, below are the available roadmaps in Cloud ALM for project setup.
Select a roadmap and SAVE, the Q-gates gets auto populated as below.
Click on the generated Q-gate to open and start working on the pre-defined checklist with available drop down options as below.
What is the clean core governance preparation process?
Create Tag group and tags
Below Tags were created under the tag group for clean core adaption as these are the Cloud ALM entities to establish clean core governance.
ProcessRequirementsUser StoriesFeatures
What is Solution Process Traceability and how it can be leveraged for clean core adaption?
To analyze the readiness of scoped solution processes based on the progress of related requirements and Test execution. We can find the answers to questions about the readiness of related entities.
The Solution Process Traceability has been upgraded with a feature to do the indirect assignments as below:
New and planned offerings
To have an automated dashboard to visualize clean core related information. The dashboard will automatically populate the clean core dashboard based on the clean core related information from the below data providers:Q-GatesSolution ProcessRequirementsUser StoriesFeatures
Session 3 – Streamlining Business Processes While Preserving a Clean Core- 26th November 2024
How to transform business from strategy to execution?
Going from an ECC system to legacy S/4 Hana it’s a continuous cycle, do a fit to standard workshop, document the findings and decided to redesign the process that needs to be implemented.
It’s a continuous process using SAP integrated tools.
SAP Signavio: SAP Signavio Process tools are primarily used for process analysis and process mining activities.SAP Cloud ALM : It helps customers to implement and operate their cloud or hybrid solutions.SAP Leanix: SAP LeanIX is a SaaS application that allows to manage and optimize enterprise architecture.SAP Enable Now: SAP Enable Now is a digital adoption platform (DAP) from SAP that provides in-application help and e-learning content to improve the adoption, productivity, and efficiency of SAP softwareTricentis: Accelerates testing of all your applications, data, and business processes and integrates with tools across your delivery pipeline.
What is SAP Rise with SAP Methodology Framework?
SAP Signavio is the starting point for modelling the business process.Landscape discovery involves documenting the organization’s IT landscape, planning, designing, and overseeing the implementation of architectural changes to meet changing business needs.Create a project on Cloud ALM with required roadmap selectionConduct fit-to-standard workshops, to identify the gaps.Project execution begins in the realize phase with SAP Activate methodology.
E2E Process flow of SAP Rise with SAP Methodology Framework
Insights of the Clean core adaption for Business Process Transformation
Define Solution process and create requirements with user story and subtasks.Adapt best practice solution process or customize if needed.Copy solution process flow diagram into a custom processAdapt Business Process accordingly.
Session 4 – Ensuring a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM: Test, Change, and Deployment Management- 28th November 2024
Cloud ALM Test management capabilities
Test management in cloud alm can be manual or automatic through Tricentis. Test automation API’s provide liberty to integrate further 3rd party tools.Test case is associated to Solution Process scope & mapped to a requirement for test Planning.The test case can be built and executed manually or automatic through Tricentis.A Defect can be raised through cloud alm defect Management to identify the gaps in the test results.
How Tricentis is used to build and execute the test cases?
Module based test automation in the cloud.Use XScan to scan screen and relevant UI elementsUse Builder to assemble the Test Case based Scanned Modules, Reusable test steps and SAP standard module.
Analyze the test results in a central entry for all test related information and activities in the dashboard.
Current change management capability of cloud alm
What is a Feature?
Functionality that is represented by a feature must be deployed to a target system togetherCreate a feature and assign a transport to be deployed in target systems.
To restrict the manual TR creation and release on development system, as per the SAP recommendation it should be done through authorizations on the managed system.Mass deployment of transports to quality at the moment is only possible through the STMS import job. The deployment scheduler is aimed to provide the mass deployment functionality which will be based on release and feature status as optional where we can select transports based on a deployment plan and the target system for the deployment.SAP doesn’t have any plans for custom statuses in change management, but workflow API is planned for Q1 2025, where we will be able to trigger an external workflow. SAP is also looking into providing a custom field in future so that at least this sub-status or this sub-workflow status can be shown in Cloud ALM in the feature. But it is not planned to change the main status screen of the feature to add some custom status.To map a four-tier landscape in Cloud ALM SAP recommends looking into the workflow APIs as soon as they are available. For now, we can use the successfully tested status to do the checks in the QA and with the deployment scheduler feature we can have option to deploy the changes to the pre-production system. And then we can use the same approval as well for the production, so the ready for production status to render approval on the pre-prod and production level.
Current Workflow of change management in Cloud ALM
*Use Clean core tags to make the feature for clean core adaption.
Session 5 – Operational Excellence with SAP Cloud ALM: Driving the Clean Core Initiative – 3rd December 2024
How SAP Cloud ALM supports clean core approach adoption in Operations with its 5 principles
Processes –Business Process Monitoring and Job and Automation Monitoring processes are running, and we need to monitor processes and several KPIs which are actually monitored by the business process monitoring application.Extensibility – To drive business continuity of extensions for the Clean Core adoption is that when we try to do modifications and extensions in S4 system directly. SAP recommends not to modify too much as makes it easier to upgrade the systems.Data – The data is exchanged between different Cloud solutions, if we consider master data, we need to ensure that this data is exchanged between the process and is running as expected. The integration monitoring application is developed to start with message-based monitoring more at technical level, and we cover events as data exchange at different technologies. SAP is now trying to bring a kind of a business object view in these exchange processes to support the data dimension of clean core.Integration – Integration and exception monitoring is an entire application dedicated to the monitoring and supporting of all type of integration artifacts from S/4 HANA, CPI, master data integration. We need to make sure that integration and data exchange processes are monitored and is happening in a reliable way. This helps in visualizing the message exchange between the systems with the status of the messages, so that we can understand if there is a problem in the integration between your systems to keep the integration clean Operations – To have a holistic and secure application and business process operations, SAP is planning to have operations as to help the customers understand how the landscape is running and how it can be optimized to have a clean system.
Clean Core Operation Dashboards Overview
There are multiple dashboards planned to give a deep dive the possibility to evaluate the quality of operations and take measures accordingly to optimize the solution for a clean core adaption.
Operations Dashboards preview for Clean Core project
New & Planned offerings on the Cloud ALM Roadmap for clean core adoption
Planned Future Roadmap to enhance Cloud ALM capability
Link to Roadmap explorer : SAP Road Map Explorer
Key takeaways: SAP Cloud ALM for clean core adaption
A clean core helps customers to stay current and agile compliant with innovation from SAPClean core is a journey, which needs to be adapted by following a step-by-step approachSAP Cloud ALM provides contribution for all five dimensions (processes, extensibility, data, integration, operations) of SAP’s Clean Core initiative.Customers can build custom processes and functionality using side-by-side or built in extensionsChange Management in Cloud ALM is planned to be enhanced by Q4 2024 / Q1 2025End to end monitoring drives business continuity and quality of process executionSAP Cloud ALM operations will become the platform for clean core dashboards. SAP plans to provide operation status as well as improvement dashboards covering business service availability, system operations, application operations as well as business process operations.SAP plans to provide security status as well as improvement dashboards covering security configuration as well as security runtime aspects.
Thank you for reading the blog, I hope this helps you find a summary on Clean Core Webinars.
Note: Some pictures have been taken from the slides shared by SAP for the webinar series.
Enable a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM- Webinar SummaryApproach for this BlogIn this blog I have documented the summary from the Virtual Webinar Series on Enable a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM.Summary of sessions:Session 1 – Maximizing Clean Core Benefits with SAP Cloud ALM- 20th November 2024Session 2 – Efficiently Managing RISE with SAP Projects: A Clean Core Approach Using SAP Cloud ALM-21st November 2024Session 3 – Streamlining Business Processes While Preserving a Clean Core- 26th November 2024Session 4 – Ensuring a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM: Test, Change, and Deployment Management- 28th November 2024Session 5 – Operational Excellence with SAP Cloud ALM: Driving the Clean Core Initiative – 3rd December 2024New & Planned offerings on the Cloud ALM Roadmap for clean core adoptionPlanned Future Roadmap to enhance Cloud ALM capabilitySession 1 – Maximizing Clean Core Benefits with SAP Cloud ALM- 20th November 2024What is Clean Core?Clean core is a journey, which needs to be adapted by following a step-by-step approach.GreenfieldUnique opportunity to follow clean core principles right from beginning.Establish strong governance.BrownfieldEstablish clean core principle for every new deployment.Plan your journey towards a clean core.Benefits of Clean CoreCase Study of Hitachi Challenges9000 customization in legacy SAP ERP applicationManage ERP version upgrade cycle.Value Driven ResultsAdopting fit to standard approach has allowed Hitachi to reduce core system customization from more than 9000 to 22.Developments are now reused across the landscape.A drastically less customized landscape has seen update cycle reduced from every five years to yearly.The impact94% reduction in customization footprint18x handling of solution updates100% of on-site maintenance requirements eliminatedBusiness Transformation and clean core How each dimension of Cloud ALM supports clean core How project management can be used for clean core.As clean core is a journey, it’s an ongoing process and cannot be adapted at once.We need to make sure we are following the Best practices and adapting the SAP Activate methodologies to be agile compliant in our clean core journey.Define teams and roles.Define Timeboxes and releases.Adapt Q-Gates ManagementOverall dashboarding for tracking the project progress.You can find the E2E project management details in my blog which was demonstrated in the webinar. https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-members/all-the-buzz-about-sap-cloud-alm/ba-p/13881779Rise with SAP Methodology DashboardIt fetches the data from multiple sources, Signavio, leanIx, Q-gates , readiness report etc.Supports in making decisions which steps to be taken in what sequence for clean core adaptionBridging the gap from analysis to execution by task creation and distribution among project teamSession 2 – Efficiently Managing RISE with SAP Projects: A Clean Core Approach Using SAP Cloud ALM-21st November 2024What is Clean Core Functionality?Contains tasks to learn more about clean core methodologyClean core success plan is a subset of 118 tasks currentlyCleanup unused codeTo be as close to standardWhat is a Q-gate?Predefined milestones where a project is audited to check, if it meets the necessary criteria move to next phase.Checkpoints for the current defined project task What is the importance of Q-gates in clean core adaption?To tack cross project clean core activities.Automatically generated Q-gates in clean core adaption Project Setup and roadmap selection for clean core adaptionThere are three ways to manage clean core tasksAs a part of implementation projectAs a part of system conversionIn a consolidation projectFor all the variants Q-gates are automatically created as per the selected roadmap. Selecting a roadmap while creating a project, below are the available roadmaps in Cloud ALM for project setup. Select a roadmap and SAVE, the Q-gates gets auto populated as below. Click on the generated Q-gate to open and start working on the pre-defined checklist with available drop down options as below. What is the clean core governance preparation process?Create Tag group and tags Below Tags were created under the tag group for clean core adaption as these are the Cloud ALM entities to establish clean core governance.ProcessRequirementsUser StoriesFeatures What is Solution Process Traceability and how it can be leveraged for clean core adaption?To analyze the readiness of scoped solution processes based on the progress of related requirements and Test execution. We can find the answers to questions about the readiness of related entities. The Solution Process Traceability has been upgraded with a feature to do the indirect assignments as below:New and planned offeringsTo have an automated dashboard to visualize clean core related information. The dashboard will automatically populate the clean core dashboard based on the clean core related information from the below data providers:Q-GatesSolution ProcessRequirementsUser StoriesFeaturesSession 3 – Streamlining Business Processes While Preserving a Clean Core- 26th November 2024How to transform business from strategy to execution?Going from an ECC system to legacy S/4 Hana it’s a continuous cycle, do a fit to standard workshop, document the findings and decided to redesign the process that needs to be implemented.It’s a continuous process using SAP integrated tools.SAP Signavio: SAP Signavio Process tools are primarily used for process analysis and process mining activities.SAP Cloud ALM : It helps customers to implement and operate their cloud or hybrid solutions.SAP Leanix: SAP LeanIX is a SaaS application that allows to manage and optimize enterprise architecture.SAP Enable Now: SAP Enable Now is a digital adoption platform (DAP) from SAP that provides in-application help and e-learning content to improve the adoption, productivity, and efficiency of SAP softwareTricentis: Accelerates testing of all your applications, data, and business processes and integrates with tools across your delivery pipeline.What is SAP Rise with SAP Methodology Framework?SAP Signavio is the starting point for modelling the business process.Landscape discovery involves documenting the organization’s IT landscape, planning, designing, and overseeing the implementation of architectural changes to meet changing business needs.Create a project on Cloud ALM with required roadmap selectionConduct fit-to-standard workshops, to identify the gaps.Project execution begins in the realize phase with SAP Activate methodology. E2E Process flow of SAP Rise with SAP Methodology Framework Insights of the Clean core adaption for Business Process TransformationDefine Solution process and create requirements with user story and subtasks.Adapt best practice solution process or customize if needed.Copy solution process flow diagram into a custom processAdapt Business Process accordingly. Session 4 – Ensuring a Clean Core with SAP Cloud ALM: Test, Change, and Deployment Management- 28th November 2024Cloud ALM Test management capabilitiesTest management in cloud alm can be manual or automatic through Tricentis. Test automation API’s provide liberty to integrate further 3rd party tools.Test case is associated to Solution Process scope & mapped to a requirement for test Planning.The test case can be built and executed manually or automatic through Tricentis.A Defect can be raised through cloud alm defect Management to identify the gaps in the test results.How Tricentis is used to build and execute the test cases?Module based test automation in the cloud.Use XScan to scan screen and relevant UI elementsUse Builder to assemble the Test Case based Scanned Modules, Reusable test steps and SAP standard module. Analyze the test results in a central entry for all test related information and activities in the dashboard. Current change management capability of cloud almWhat is a Feature?Functionality that is represented by a feature must be deployed to a target system togetherCreate a feature and assign a transport to be deployed in target systems. To restrict the manual TR creation and release on development system, as per the SAP recommendation it should be done through authorizations on the managed system.Mass deployment of transports to quality at the moment is only possible through the STMS import job. The deployment scheduler is aimed to provide the mass deployment functionality which will be based on release and feature status as optional where we can select transports based on a deployment plan and the target system for the deployment.SAP doesn’t have any plans for custom statuses in change management, but workflow API is planned for Q1 2025, where we will be able to trigger an external workflow. SAP is also looking into providing a custom field in future so that at least this sub-status or this sub-workflow status can be shown in Cloud ALM in the feature. But it is not planned to change the main status screen of the feature to add some custom status.To map a four-tier landscape in Cloud ALM SAP recommends looking into the workflow APIs as soon as they are available. For now, we can use the successfully tested status to do the checks in the QA and with the deployment scheduler feature we can have option to deploy the changes to the pre-production system. And then we can use the same approval as well for the production, so the ready for production status to render approval on the pre-prod and production level.Current Workflow of change management in Cloud ALM *Use Clean core tags to make the feature for clean core adaption.Session 5 – Operational Excellence with SAP Cloud ALM: Driving the Clean Core Initiative – 3rd December 2024How SAP Cloud ALM supports clean core approach adoption in Operations with its 5 principlesProcesses -Business Process Monitoring and Job and Automation Monitoring processes are running, and we need to monitor processes and several KPIs which are actually monitored by the business process monitoring application.Extensibility – To drive business continuity of extensions for the Clean Core adoption is that when we try to do modifications and extensions in S4 system directly. SAP recommends not to modify too much as makes it easier to upgrade the systems.Data – The data is exchanged between different Cloud solutions, if we consider master data, we need to ensure that this data is exchanged between the process and is running as expected. The integration monitoring application is developed to start with message-based monitoring more at technical level, and we cover events as data exchange at different technologies. SAP is now trying to bring a kind of a business object view in these exchange processes to support the data dimension of clean core.Integration – Integration and exception monitoring is an entire application dedicated to the monitoring and supporting of all type of integration artifacts from S/4 HANA, CPI, master data integration. We need to make sure that integration and data exchange processes are monitored and is happening in a reliable way. This helps in visualizing the message exchange between the systems with the status of the messages, so that we can understand if there is a problem in the integration between your systems to keep the integration clean Operations – To have a holistic and secure application and business process operations, SAP is planning to have operations as to help the customers understand how the landscape is running and how it can be optimized to have a clean system.Clean Core Operation Dashboards OverviewThere are multiple dashboards planned to give a deep dive the possibility to evaluate the quality of operations and take measures accordingly to optimize the solution for a clean core adaption. Operations Dashboards preview for Clean Core project New & Planned offerings on the Cloud ALM Roadmap for clean core adoption Planned Future Roadmap to enhance Cloud ALM capability Link to Roadmap explorer : SAP Road Map ExplorerKey takeaways: SAP Cloud ALM for clean core adaptionA clean core helps customers to stay current and agile compliant with innovation from SAPClean core is a journey, which needs to be adapted by following a step-by-step approachSAP Cloud ALM provides contribution for all five dimensions (processes, extensibility, data, integration, operations) of SAP’s Clean Core initiative.Customers can build custom processes and functionality using side-by-side or built in extensionsChange Management in Cloud ALM is planned to be enhanced by Q4 2024 / Q1 2025End to end monitoring drives business continuity and quality of process executionSAP Cloud ALM operations will become the platform for clean core dashboards. SAP plans to provide operation status as well as improvement dashboards covering business service availability, system operations, application operations as well as business process operations.SAP plans to provide security status as well as improvement dashboards covering security configuration as well as security runtime aspects.Thank you for reading the blog, I hope this helps you find a summary on Clean Core Webinars.Note: Some pictures have been taken from the slides shared by SAP for the webinar series. Read More Technology Blogs by Members articles
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