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6. No controls for promoting/transporting objects into production
In many SAP projects that I have consulted for, there are very
little controls for promoting objects into a live production
environment. Other projects are very lax with their rules for
promoting objects and have no means for auditing the approval
process for transporting objects or do not include all the necessary
stakeholders in transporting objects.
ERP systems like SAP R/3 offer benefits such as tight integrations
across its modules and sub-modules and access to real-time data, but
these benefits can backfire or even become otiose when a poorly
tested or not even tested object is transported into a production
environment. A faulty transported object such as a configuration
change or code for an interface can have a deleterious cascading
effect on other SAP functionality in the production environment. For
instance a change to the HR module within payroll can affect
functionality in the FI-CO module.
To mitigate the risk of transporting objects it is necessary to
include approvals and set up a system of workflow where stakeholders
from the testing team, Basis team, and configuration leads have
input into objects that will be transported into production. A
project should set priorities for transporting objects based on
their criticality, document and approve objects that get transported
after having been tested, and establish the frequency in which
objects will be transported (i.e. every Friday at 4:00 pm) to avoid
impacting end users as much as possible.
The company Mercury Interactive (www.mercuryinteractive.com)
offers the tool Kintana which can help companies to move objects
into various SAP clients and instances while maintaining a history
log for auditing purposes of the objects that were transported and
the entities approving the transports. Alternatively, I was a
project where the organization created a home grown repository
within Lotus Notes that provided managerial visibility for moving
and transporting SAP objects which included notifications and
approvals.
Whether a commercial tool is purchased or a home grown application
is developed the main objective is to place stringent controls for
moving objects into production with the necessary approvals while
maintaining a history log.
 
Please note:
All contents hereby presented are copyrighted material from Jose
Fajardo.  Copyrighted 2002. All rights reserved. Must obtain
permission from Jose Fajardo to reproduce, disseminate or publish
this article. Email:
jfajardo@octanesystems.net
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