Application Lifecycle Management with Cloud ALM - Pre-Requisites, Integration & Project Management

[rishi_singh3]

Let us first discuss Cloud ALM product offerings from SAP.

SAP Cloud ALM is an application lifecycle management offering for cloud-centric customers. It provides extensive implementation and operations capabilities for cloud solutions.

SAP Cloud ALM is included in cloud subscription with SAP Enterprise Support, cloud editions.

1.  SAP CALM is an SAP offering featuring majorly:
   
   
   
   1. Implementation Scenarios - It includes the creation of project plans and test cases as per SAP Activate and Agile methodology.
   
   
   2. Operations Scenarios – It includes tasks such as system monitoring, BPM, User Monitoring, System Logs.
   
   
   
   

2. Currently all SAP cloud offerings, BTP Products, S4HANA cloud, S4HANA on Premise, and SAP Business Suit greater than 7.40 can be added to CALM.

1. It provides all project management features with SAP Activate methodology.


2. It completely reduces our efforts for monitoring setup – it enables monitoring at the time we push the data using Active Use Cases


3. For STMS as well it uses Active use cases to send all the data to CALM such as Transport routes, domain controller.


4. SAP is currently developing its features and releasing them each quarter.


5. Focus is to use it for cloud-enabled and HANA solutions.

We will take a scenario in which we have S/4HANA on public Cloud (Azure) and SAP Cloud ALM.

Our goal here is to:

1. Integrate S/4 HANA system with SAP Cloud ALM


2. To create two project plans
   
   
   
   1. Project Plan - SAP Activate methodology
   
   
   2. Project Plan - Custom
   
   
   
   


3. Check on Project Traceability

Let us now work on system Integration with Cloud ALM

Pre-Requisites –

• Technical Prerequisites for the ABAP system
  
  
  
  • SAP_BASIS 7.40 SP20 or higher (accordingly 7.50 SP04)
  
  
  
  

• 
  
  
  
  • Install ST-PI 7.40 SP15 or higher
  
  
  
  

• 
  
  
  
  • Check that profile parameter icm/HTTPS/client_sni_enabled is set to TRUE (see also note 510007 - Additional considerations for setting up SSL on Application Server ABAP)
  
  
  • Check that DigiCert Global Root CA is imported in TRUST under SSL Client (Anonymous) and SSL Client (Standard)
  
  
  
  

System Integration with Cloud ALM –

Monitoring for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite uses a PUSH mechanism to push monitoring data to SAP Cloud ALM.

1. Log on to the relevant client
   
   
   
   • Transport Management: The setup must always be performed in client 000
   
   
   • All other use-cases: The setup must be performed in the client, for which you want to collect monitoring data (e.g. the production client). You can perform the setup in more than one client.
   
   
   
   

2. Call transaction /n/SDF/ALM_SETUP

Enter "Target ALM Destination"

3. Maintain HTTP Destination

Click "Update destination"

You can copy & paste the content from the JSON file created during the enablement of the SAP Cloud ALM APIs by clicking "Paste Service Keys"

4. Enter registration target

Enter the SAP Cloud ALM service key parameter "Api" without /API, e.g. eu10.alm.cloud.sap

Enter the background user you created to perform the data collection

Click on "Register" to call SAP Cloud ALM and register the system. If it is successful, an LMS ID is retrieved and is displayed.

5. Select the use cases you want to collect and push data for

After the successful setup, the SAP S/4HANA or SAP Business Suite system will show up as a "Registered" service in the Landscape Management application of your SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

The data collection for the selected use-cases will be activated automatically.

There will be some jobs that would be scheduled automatically once you push the data:

CALM Scheduler ALM

CRBPA: AUTODISCOVERY(ALM)

CRBPA:DC_CONTROLLER(ALM)

SAP_TRIGGER_VCS_IMPORT

Next, you can check your system at Cloud ALM.

 

Project Plan - SAP Activate Methodology

SAP Activate Template Project Setup – Define a Project

1. Define a Project

We can define a new project by creating it from Project Tile and selecting Task Template, Timebox, Team, and Scope.

You can select scopes from the suggested SAP Activate methodology.

SAP Activate Template Project Setup – Define Scope and Project Tasks

Process Scope

We can select Project scope from provided SAP Activate template. The scope will showcase solution value scope and solution process flow.

Template Task

For each project, we can select the project tasks from the template or can define our own. The tasks belong to the scope and are assigned to the timebox. The project task is assigned to a team and assignee. We can also set the status of the same as Done, In Progress, Open

 

 

SAP Activate Template Project Setup – Dashboard

Project Dashboard

The project dashboard captures the progress of the project.

It provides us information on:

• Overall Tasks Progress


• Project Progress


• Upcoming Tasks


• Requirements


• Features


• Test Cases

 

Requirements, User Stories, Tasks, Subtasks.

Requirements

We can raise requirements for our project.

The requirements can arise due to the scope not being correct or requiring additional modifications.

Once raised, the requirement should be approved.

Once approved requirement can be moved to status – In Specification, In Realization, In Deployment, Deployed and Not Planned

User Story

For any task or requirement assigned to an assignee, he or she can have additional needs or viewpoints to communicate.

This can be done via creating a user story.

Tasks

Any action that needs to be taken to progress the work is a task. Each task is assigned to a team and assignee. Its status can be changed to – In progress, Open, Blocked, Done, Not relevant. Tasks are associated with a timebox

Subtasks

Subtasks can be created for a user story or a task.

It is breaking the work into smaller parts due to some dependency.

 

Project Plan - Custom

SAP Custom Template Project Setup

SAP Custom Project

We can also define our project from scratch.

Right now, the SAP Activate template is not supporting all scenarios.

We defined the project plan from excel runbook to SAP Cloud ALM.

We took the project plan based on our experience – BOBJ Migration on Azure Cloud.

For scopes, we selected – Pre-Requisites, BOBJ Export and Import Activities, Installation on Azure Cloud, Post Activities / Validations



Each task is defined under a project scope.

Below is the screenshot showing the project task in the Pre-Requisites Category and Explore timebox.

SAP Custom Template Project Setup - Project Dashboard

It will capture all the details, roadblocks, and progress of the project plan.

We can also track the project or any overdue tasks.

 

 

Project Traceability

Traceability

In the Analytics tab, you can check the project traceability.

• Test Execution Analysis


• Task Trend Analysis


• Requirement Traceability


• Process Traceability


• Burn Up Chart

Below is the screenshot for Requirement traceability.

It will provide requirement status and if any project task or user story is associated with it.

Conclusion

Our Target was to explore cloud ALM Capabilities. This product is getting enhanced each day.

We achieved -

1. Integration of S4HANA on Azure with Cloud ALM


2. Created Project based out of SAP Activate methodology.


3. Created a Custom project based on our past experience.


4. Checked the Project Traceability on basis of requirements , test cases and more.

Finally I would say its a very powerful and innovative tool for cloud based products and I am sure SAP is working towards making it next SOLMAN on the Cloud.

Please share your thoughts and do let me know for any questions in comments section.

I will do my best to answer the same.