Change Project FAQ Page

[saurabh_saxena]

This blog series is designed to help in understanding the concept and usage of change projects in business configuration. The idea of this series is to explain the features of the change projects, and some do's and dont's while working on it. This blog series will contain following articles:

1. Introduction - Concept and Usage
2. Change Project Types - Remote or Local
3. Change Project - Merge and Sync with Production
4. Change Project Life Cycle
5. Change Project FAQ Page

This FAQ page is a running page to document answers and explanations arising in change project area.

Question - Can I create a change project in a customer test system?

Answer- No, a change project can only be created in a customer production system.

Question - I do not see "new" button active in Business Configuration - Implementation Projects list?

Answer - This new button will only be active when your production system's implementation project "First Implementation" is in status "Live".

Question - What is meant by "Go Live"?

Answer - "Go Live" here means the initial go live of the system when the "First Implementation" project is set to "Live" status. You can create change projects only after this phase of Go Live confirmation.

Question - What kinds of configuration changes I can perform before and after go live?

Answer - There is no restriction on configuration changes before go live. You can do scoping or fine tuning changes in this phase of project. After go live, there are certain restriction on making configuration changes. These restrictions are in place to avoid getting discrepancies in the production system. After go live, user is not allowed to do any change with respect to scoping of the implementation project. User can do most of fine tuning related modifications, however there are few fine tuning activities which are not allowed to be modified after go live phase.

Question - Can I create a change project from some existing solution template?

Answer - No, this is not possible. When a change project is created, a copy of the existing live implementation project is created as a change project.

Question - Can I transfer my change project to an existing test system or I need to get a new test tenant for this?

Answer - Yes, you can transfer your change project to an existing test system in the customer landscape.

Question - Can I transfer a change project to multiple test system from a production system?

Answer - No, a change project from a production system can only be transferred to one test system but not to many. For example, in a standard 3-tier system landscape (Dev-QA-Production), a requirement might be to first transfer the change project to dev system, and from their transfer to QA system and at last transfer or merge it with production system. This is not possible and also not much required. Testing of a change project does not much make sense in a dev tenant, but instead a change project should be modified and tested in a proper QA or test system. This way, it would be sufficient to transfer a change project from production to a proper test system.

Question - How the change project behaves in case of multiple production systems?

Answer - In case of multiple production systems, it is assumed that these are standalone production systems. A connected multiple production system is not a standard scenario in cloud for customer system landscape. Therefore, as the production systems are disconnected, a change project created in one production system can only be merged with that production system but not to others.

Question - Can I make changes to a change project in production system after I have moved it to a test system?

Answer - No, once a change project is moved to a test system successfully, you will not be able to make changes in that change project in the production system. In fact, you will see an entry of this change project in the production system stating that this change project is active in a remote system. This entry is just for a reference to know that there exists a change project in a test system. Whatever changes you want to do in this change project can only be carried out in the test system where it is moved to.

Question - Once I merge the change project from a test system, can I make changes to the change project in that test system?

Answer - No, in case your merge is successful, as a result, that change project is now moved back to the production system. In case you want to carry further changes/activities in the change project, this needs to be carried out in the production system.

Question - In case of a merged change project, can I do further configuration changes?

Answer - No, once a change project is merged, no further scoping or fine tuning changes can be done. The only activities possible after merge are migration related activities.

[majid_ahmed]

Hi Saurabh,

I am currently facing an issue on my change project where I am adding into the scope of the change project the Sales Assistant tool: path Sales>New Business>Opportunities>Sales Assistant. The problem I have is that although Sales cycles and phases are already scoped and live in the production system, by adding the sales assistant to the scope, when I press Finish I get the message "It is not possible to finalize your scope changes; some of your decisions would cause inconsistencies in your fine tuning settings".

All the questions within all elements have been set to reviewed. The scenarios from which I can select "Add type of business", "add country" and "Extend implementation focus".

However, when I select Extend Implementation focus, the message I receive from the system is that "UI is marked as obsolete, please create a ticket".

As I don't wan't to add a country or new business the workaround is that I continue without selecting any scenario. Please can you advise what the best workaround is here.

Many Thanks

Majid

[former_member149094]

Hi Majid,

This error appears when some fine tuning entries have been deleted, but later, additional scoping is done (in your case Sales Assistant) and the pre delivered content for this refers to the deleted Fine tuning content.

We will not be able to give the exact details of the issue causing content through the blog post as it requires system analysis. Please raise an incident for the same.

Regards

Geetha

[Former Member]

Good article on change projects!

What is the recommended frequency of change projects? Once a month? once a week? what if your multiple LOB (lines of business') are on a single global tenant? Is it suggested that we gather requirements from all and create a single change project for all changes once a month?

Will the number of change projects affect system performance?

Please share the recommendations if any.

Thanks,

Gautam

[Former Member]

I understand that the article says, change projects are only for configurations. Having said that, I am assuming they wont affect the SDK deployments/changes in the existing Production tenant. Just wondering if the existing SDK changes will be required to be re-deployed for a change project?

How are new SDK changes if required during the Change project, moved to Production ?

[former_member149094]

Hi Gautam,

There is no frequency recomendded for Change Projects. It is purely based on the business need to implement changes in configuration. The recommendation is to avoid carrying Change Projects over multiple releases.

Technically, you can create any number of Change Projects in the Production Tenant. However, if you have only one test tenant, there can only be one remote change project.

Regards

Geetha

[former_member149094]

Hi Gautam,

SDK solutions have their own lifecycle. they can be deployed to the Production in Parallel.

However, when you merge, the Test Tenant and the Production Tenant should be at the same Patch levels with respect to the SDK solution.

Regards

Geetha

[Former Member]

Thank you for the response on both the counts Geetha.

[MG-Moen]

Scenario: we created a change project in production and copied into our test tenant.  We make several configuration changes in our test tenant by various developers over a period of weeks.

Before we merge the Change Project from test back to production, is there a way to see all the changes that were made so that we are fully aware of the impact on the production system?

Regards.

Mike

[Unirs40]

Hi Michael,

Simulate merge will provide the impact on the production system.

Once the activities are done in the change project, you will perform below steps to ensure null effect in production post merge

1. Update the Change Project fro Production (Sync)


2. Resolve the conflicts (if any)


3. Simulate

Regards,

Srini

[annibel]

Hello SAP team,

thanks for the great blog on change projects. However I could not find answer to my issue: we have a remote change project in our test tenant, but do not want to merge it to production anymore. The project and business case that was scoped was abandonned and the changes should NOT be moved to PRD. Can I cancel the change project? As far as I know a new system copy from production to test tenant is not possible as long as a change project is still open...

Thanks for your answer!

Kind regards

Annete