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    Agile Development For SAP

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    Andrei Gaia
    agile development for SAP

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Agile Development For SAP

    Uploaded by

    Andrei Gaia
    83 views8 pages
    agile development for SAP

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    agile development for SAP

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    agile development for SAP

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pdf or txt
    83 views8 pages

    Agile Development For SAP

    Uploaded by

    Andrei Gaia
    agile development for SAP

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 8

    What you need to know about

    agile development for SAP


    The only constant in today’s business environment is
    change. Companies that can’t react quickly to ever-
    changing market demands face an uncertain future. The
    speed at which your business can respond in the new digital
    age, increasingly relies on how fast your software can
    change. The onus is on businesses to deliver applications
    faster – including SAP applications – to satisfy customer
    and business demands without delay. The result: agile
    development is fast becoming top of mind for business
    owners and CIOs with back-end SAP systems.

    What is agile development?


    Simply, agile development is a way to quickly build software and
    get it in the hands of end users. The focus is on delivering quality
    working software frequently, while significantly reducing project
    overheads.

    The agile development methodology was born out of the


    frustrations around unproductive software development
    processes. Long lead times, overblown budgets and inflexible
    project scopes were prevalent. Meaning software development
    often failed to keep pace with business change and rising
    customer expectations.

    For example, it was common for SAP projects to run over


    budget and with delays, failing to provide value to clients and
    users. Project problems frequently occurred because the level of
    complexity required a deep understanding of an organization’s
    industry, operational processes, business challenges and
    customer expectations.

    To mitigate much of the risk, businesses and SAP project teams


    • adopted the waterfall approach with the emphasis on planning
    and documentation, not the quick delivery of working software.

    2 Version Number 1
    Benefits of agile development for SAP
    Unlike the waterfall method, agile development is a step towards the continuous delivery of SAP change, giving businesses
    a competitive edge and accelerating innovation. Adopting agile principles delivers benefits to your business and project
    managers. These include:

    Increased Business Engagement - For developers to meet project requirements they need to
    regularly engage and involve business stakeholders in the development process to ensure the required
    outcomes and results are delivered

    Predictable Delivery and Cost - Using short 2-4 week sprints and pre-estimated efforts for changes,
    you can anticipate the completion of new features and functionality. With a fixed duration and a known
    expected effort for the content of each sprint, the cost is capped and predictable.

    Allows for iterations - Teams need to focus on delivering pre-determined content for the sprint.
    However, following the sprint businesses can refine and enhance requirements, adding additional requests
    to a backlog which can be reprioritized.

    Business and User Value - Typically, requirements are defined by user stories, ensuring that outcomes
    of a feature or capability relate to end-user engagement. An organization’s ability to determine the priority
    of user stories means highly engaged stakeholders and a better business outcome.

    Improved Quality - The use of multiple sprints to deliver a project enables constant review, refinement,
    collaboration and the early identification of gaps in expectations.

    Version Number 1 3
    Can agile development help your business?
    Traditionally, demands for high quality applications and
    services without sacrificing production system stability –
    or two-track IT – shackled accelerated development and
    delivery.

    Yet, more than ever, responding quickly to constantly


    changing market demands is crucial to survival. As a result,
    SAP IT teams are now under pressure to deliver more
    change, more frequently while maintaining system integrity.
    Organizations who can ensure a higher velocity, volume
    and quality of developing and deploying SAP changes will
    gain a competitive advantage.

    Embracing agile practices within your SAP


    environment can:
    • Speed up application delivery,

    • Reduce operational costs, and

    • Minimize production system downtime.

    4 Version Number 1
    Agile development for SAP: the challenges
    While the benefits of going agile are evident, achieving them • Speed vs governance – Agile encourages rapid SAP
    can be hard. The transition to SAP agile is a journey and not change which is at odds with governance requirements
    without its challenges. An agile strategy demands changes in for core systems that limit change or at the very least
    technology, processes and ultimately culture. slow it down.

    Some of the issues of adopting an agile approach in a SAP • Parallel development – Being agile can mean enabling
    environment are: parallel development to speed up SAP change. The
    problem is: How do SAP IT teams manage parallel
    • Workflow management – A move towards agile development, which has been largely limited due to its
    development requires increased cross-team collaboration, unpredictability and risk to production system stability.
    improving productivity and delivering software features
    and capabilities faster. This is in direct opposition to • Visibility of SAP change – SAP IT teams need technical
    the long-established waterfall method where SAP IT visibility into changes to better understand and manage
    teams work in silos on high-stake projects with concrete application development, dependencies and transport
    milestones to achieve. sequence, preventing production incidents.

    Version Number 1 5
    A way to make
    SAP agile work
    Automation is critical for firms to meet SAP agile
    objectives. Historically, SAP change control management
    has largely been a manual process. The problem is, the
    more manual procedures and tasks your business has, the
    riskier SAP changes become.

    Automating SAP change control processes enables your


    business to build and enhance applications and services
    faster and more effectively. Error-prone manual tasks
    are eliminated and replaced with automated, repeatable
    processes to accelerate SAP change and avoid costly,
    unscheduled downtime.

    Other benefits of SAP change control automation


    include:
    • Enforces process compliance and significantly
    cuts audit effort – Policy is enforced across multiple
    solutions, technologies and landscapes. Meaning you
    can easily meet regulatory requirements, drive down
    costs of compliance and reduce audit effort while
    maintaining a rapid delivery schedule.

    • Prevents avoidable SAP application development,


    transport and deployment errors – Automated
    technical visibility reduces the need for manual checks,
    speeds up application development and ensures
    changes can be deployed without breaking the
    production system.

    6 Version Number 1
    The bottom line
    Keeping pace in the digital age means modernizing
    software development to speed up application delivery.
    More traditional slow, manual application development
    methods are on the way out.

    Applying agile principles to your SAP environment


    streamlines your application development processes to
    deliver more software, more frequently while avoiding a
    systems outage. Meaning your business gets exactly what
    it wants, when it needs it, gaining a competitive edge.

    Automation is the way forward. Organizations who


    automate change control management processes can
    increase the frequency and volume of SAP change
    without risk, align software development with business
    requirements and ultimately meet market expectations.

    For more information on how to make SAP agile at your organization check out our resources page
    at www.rev-trac.com/resources/ or if you have a specific question, email [email protected]
    and one of our SAP change management experts will get in touch.

    Version Number 1 7
    Get in touch

    e [email protected]
    w www.rev-trac.com

    Copyright © 2018 Revelation Software Concepts Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. SAP is a registered Trademark of SAP AG. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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