The fact that SAP has even introduced the BPCA seems to indicate the value it has assigned to impact analysis. Impact analysis is, of course, a topic that has been addressed in various articles in the beteo blog.
Unfortunately SAP and its “Business Process” Change Analyzer, in contrast to beteo, deal exclusively with the technical analysis of transactions and programs. So, anyone who expects SAP’s analytical offering to include the overlying logical areas will be in for a long wait.

I have so far been unable to precisely analyze the technology behind the SAP BPCA. However, one can already make certain technological assumptions based on the available screenshots. It appears that BPCA is based on a run-time analysis, which makes it impossible to conduct impact analysis directly in the corresponding production environment. The result, in my assessment, is that only corresponding predefined scenarios can be analyzed with BPCA. Honestly, who today wants to restrict themselves to such procedures when performing analysis?

The question we must ask is why SAP didn’t turn to “standard” analysis tools like LiveCompare from Intellicorp, Panaya from Panaya Inc., RBE from IBIS or CIT for SAP from HP. These are based on “smarter” approaches to impact analysis and impact management, and their merits have been proven through real-world usage.

Summary: SAP Business Process Change Analyzer (SAP BPCA)

Once again, on paper SAP’s BPCA satisfies most of the items found on typical request for proposal (RFP) checklists pertaining to impact analysis. However, upon closer scrutiny many higher expectations that customers have regarding a bona-fide business process change analyzer have not been met.

My expectations regarding SAP solution management would be that SAP could finally take on the task of solution management for specific customer implementation scenarios, and that it would do so in a comprehensive manner. Sadly, this has not yet been achieved. Even after visiting the solution management presentations I was disappointed to find that even though the SAP Solution Manager does fulfill the requirements to manage a standard SAP system, key functions pertaining to the solution management of specific SAP customer implementations are missing.

Apparently the Solution Manager, with respect to SAP, remains primarily a gateway to the customer’s infrastructure. It allows the lifecycle management of the SAP standard software to be safeguarded in an optimized way.

SAP’s marketing, however, cleverly packages the Solution Manager as a comprehensive lifecycle management solution for specific SAP customer environments, even though basic requirements for bona-fide solution management using SolMan—such as customization version control or dependency management among individual software components—are nonexistent. This is all the more surprising because, for the standard SAP system, such functions are already implemented in the SAP CIM model.

Clever marketing messages that tout functionalities such as SAP ChaRM and SAP CTS+ produce a situation where customers pay barely any attention to the actual challenges that SAP ChaRM and SAP CTS+ must confront in regard to competing change request management and the consistent deployment of heterogeneous components. These are just two examples of individual functions through which SAP marketing attempts to convey that it comprehensively addresses the real-world, day-to-day challenges of competing operations- and project-related business transactions.

I wonder which customers truly use plain vanilla, non-customized SAP systems, since the need for changes will be obvious the moment such systems are used live. That establishes the need for real SAP solution management, meaning SAP lifecycle management. The SAP customer system does exist, but unfortunately product management for the SAP Solution Manager  hasn’t understood that yet.

Summary: Lifecycle Management with the SAP Solution Manager

It is somewhat disillusioning that SAP still hasn’t directed the SAP lifecycle management toward solution management for its thousands of different customer implementations. Despite the potential benefits for all SAP customers, the lifecycle management solution bearing the wonderful name of Solution Manager is still mainly a software logistics-specific bridgehead for SAP standard software.

One should consider that every customer implementation is unique and ultimately requires modern standardized procedures and standard solution management tools. Perhaps there is some benefit to the fact that compliance requirements are increasingly compelling customers to utilize more fully developed SAP solution management processes and solutions that implement for example customization version control. Admittedly, it would be desirable if SAP could take care of this in the standard Solution Manager. In any event, it would certainly be possible.

N.B.: beteo has implemented comprehensive SAP solution management for actual customer implementations based on standard processes and standard software, for example HP PPM. Instead of implementing SAP solution management for every customer individually, in addition to Solution Manager, it might make sense to have beteo scope out a potential Solution Manager project with SAP Solution Manager’s product management. We always consider our customers’ requirements.

These are only some of the questions asked by IT managers every day. They arise from different requirements.

For example, there is the requirement to distribute system costs to the user departments based on usage. Particularly, if legally separate business areas share a SAP client, this can be a challenge.

Another task is the preparation of lifecycle events such as SAP upgrades, SAP roll-outs, installation of SAP support packages, SAP consolidations, SAP system optimizations or the isolation of selected clients or accounting areas. In these cases, it is important to know which processes are concerned, which custom developed code is needed or no longer needed. A major German client in the manufacturing industry confirms the importance of such tasks “Analysis will be the central part of our upcoming China project“.

The scenarios described above are only part of the range of possible questions to which IntelliCorp LiveCompare provides answers. Usage data is handled with utmost care and is consolidated when issued in reports. This consolidation can selectively be based on enterprise affiliation or department or any other criteria. This is one example of the consistent use of LiveCompare.

The mentioned manufacturing client above now retrieves consistently his usage statistics per country and per department. A cron-job is used for a controlled generation of the statistics.

About the author: Fritz Mosonyi is senior consultant and division manager for SAP tools at beteo partner SPP Wien.

The financial market is about trust; in hazardeers and unscrupulous profiteers, it is hard to trust.  Production companies particularly the automotive industry, but also in pharmaceuticals (the latest in five years) the crises is about missing and false innovation. The global economic relations crisis is about the missing and the wrong political rules.

“Crisis” means, that there is something to decide, and not that something is running bad. Although, usually we need things becoming (a little) worse before we realize that and what we have to decide .

• The decision is, whether in our management training and corporations we want to communicate and hand down cultural values, which are quite unrealistic and only have short-term profits in their focus. Do we really want to subscribe the dogmas of business administration, which instead of human spirit and creative power only are oriented to the key performance indicators of economic control?
• In contrast to medium-sized enterprises in close contact with their customers, turn large corporations and their supply chains are dominated in their innovations by looking at themselves - autism instead of creativity: Post-drawn carriages with coil springs, spray protection and isolation had never seen a market, even if technological innovation promised.
• The irony meaning of the phrase “capitalism as a religion” has its fundamentalist ghost actually adopted. Freedom from rules, spelled better as the chance to enforce ones profit rules and state them as the political order.

The crisis of econonomic culture can not be coped with probably in a few months. Cultural values must grow again:

• public policy and corporate social responsibility instead of unbridled profit,
• sense of justice and human measure instead of exploitation,
• lateral thinking, courage and creative innovation rather than business autism;
• international cooperation in the shaping of policy frameworks.

The small plants grow already. How much crisis we will probably still need to decide and seize the opportunity?

About the author:
Dr. Michael Loebbert is Coach and Management Consultant and author of the montly publication “Change Management Short Cut“.

CMDBs (Configuration Management Databases) are used more and more consistently in enterprises in order to map and survey the increasingly complex system landscapes. In fact, uCMDB is an infrastructure library. uCMDB (Universal CMDB) is the name for the HP´s CMDB implementation, which clearly focuses on the capability of mapping large business environments.

The training was a five-day course held at Oracle´s Training Center. The participants came from Finland, Poland, England and Switzerland.

Training Topics

The course started with a survey about how to use a CMDB. Step-by-step, we were led through (almost) all menus of uCMDB, including many explanations and useful exercises. The following topics were discussed in detail.

CMDB

The basic element of a CMDB is the so-called CI (Configuration Item), which describes the properties of any hardware, software as well as business process. Each CI is an instance of a CIT (Configuration Item Type), comparable to an object in object-oriented programming, which is an instance of a class.

On the basis of the defined inheritances and interdependencies, the system and business landscape of an enterprise can be designed. Every single CI can be dependent on other CIs. This enables systems to be described very flexibly. Thus, using a CMDB, it is also possible to define systems according to the ITIL-Standard.

Main Components of uCMDB

One of the main components of uCMDB is the administration interface enabling not only to define program settings and user rights, but also to manage and control the actual configuration management database.

The other basic component is the view of the configuration management database.  It allows IT managers to continuously have an overview of the present configuration.

The training focused on the administration interface. The trainer explained how to create CIs and CITs, how to define interdependencies and inheritances, and how to implement “views” to be accessed by the user. Additionally, we learned much about reporting and statistics.

uCMDB Functions

The most important and powerful modules of uCMDB are the automatic search function enabling the search for system landscape changes by means of “discovery”, the “impact analysis” and the distributed storage of the CMDB via a centralized administration, the so-called “Federated” data model.

The complete CI administration and configuration of all views of subsets of the CMDB are implemented graphically, using the so-called TQL (Topology Query Language).

Universe Manager

The Universe Manager maps all CIs. It allows CMDB administrators to manage the actual CMDB data. This includes entering and changing the CIs as well as the relationships between them.

Care needs to be taken when deleting CIs. The 7.0 version of UCMDB removes them completely from the database.  There is no undo function, although all CI changes are stored in a history database.

View Manager

This is where views of subsets from the CMDB are defined. The views can be accessed by the CMDB users. So for example, you can create a “view” showing all computers in a defined network that use an obsolete firewall. This view can then be presented to the person in charge of the network administration.

For defining the views, TQL is used here as well.

Discovery

Discovery works with discovery probes which assume tasks to explore the landscape via discovery gateways, the tasks being defined in the principal CMDB server. A major challenge when “scanning” server and network components is security. Reading the component properties requires a connection which must not be impaired by any subnets or firewalls. This means that the uCMDB must know the necessary administration passwords in order to be able to discover system details.

Reading the properties can be as detailed as you like. In case you find that support by the standard version of uCMDB is missing, just write your own Jython scripts which then discovers the required system properties.

If a certain service is not found by discovery, its entry will eventually be removed from the database. The period after which this will happen can be defined by each CIT, and also for each CI individually.

Impact Analysis

UCMDB offers useful mapping and analysis of system failures. Defining potential problems in advance enables the analysis of system failures even for remote systems, connected via large number of nodes.

Federated Database

Federated Database enables distribution of a potentially large UCMDB database to a number of physical systems. So different business headquarters can have their own databases administered via the centralized UCMDB installation. This enables faster database queries, still allowing the users to work with real-time data, as the central server knows where to find them.

However, a CIT can be stored in one database only. If more than one database is holding CIs, inherited classes will not be found.

Use of UCMDB in Application Change Management?

Basically, UCMDB is able to store all kinds of properties of all kinds of systems. Nevertheless it is not a trivial task to use the UCMDB together with application lifecycle management (ALM) for managing software components and versions. UCMDB is not predominantly designed to cover this environment, at least such market positioning seems not primarily aimed at by HP.

In combination with HP Business Availability Center (HP BAC), UCMDB allows a monitoring system to be implemented. In cooperation with uCMDB´s impact analysis function it will be able to record and describe all system failures in detail and enable evaluations, all in real-time. Another application would be exploring web services in combination with HP SOA Center.

UCMDB offers interfaces to easily integrate with external tools. But the extent, to which this is reasonable, depends on how much data the CMDB can handle without its performance being reduced.  Suitable “views” enable its contents to be represented in the most simple way.

Additionally, the discovery of configuration files allows you to get a lot of information about the customization of selected software components. On this basis, problems concerning version updates can be recognized in advance, discussed and avoided through analyses. This is particularly true for updates of SAP modules.

Summary

The training course has clearly demonstrated the power of the uCMDB, in spite and because of its actually simple structure. Particularly, the five days offered an introduction into uCMDB´s functionalities without considering all details that might get important when the product is used in large enterprises and institutions. The very pleasant GUI of the uCMDB allows the user to get familiar with the product within a rather short time.

The uCMDB offers an API allowing the entire application to be controlled from outside. However, it can be a major effort to employ the product in a useful way. At present, HP sells this product mainly as an infrastructure library although its functionality comprises much more than that.

Unfortunately, the course did not really offer an insight into the usefulness of uCMDB in the context of application lifecycle management and quality management. By providing more articles about such practical use of UCMDB, we are going to address this gap soon.

The training material was still based on UCMDB 7.0, although UCMDB 7.5 was already available. The reason given for this was that the only difference between the two versions regards the wizard leading through discovery configuration. However, working with the newest version would have been even more motivating.

In general, the course allowed me to complete my knowledge of UCMDB and get a more profound idea of some fields that were partly new to me. It was very helpful, even if I still have some open-end questions which could not be answered by the course.

Basically, the process of managing and driving project execution has three stages

• Leadership Initiation
• Leadership execution management
• Leadership Closing

Fig.: The three stages of the leadership process

1. Leadership Initiation

The execution of every project should be marked by a clearly defined initiation. Setting up the process on an intelligent, elaborate and accurately described base concept can save a considerable amount of time and money.

Initiation provides the project framework and defines the project guidelines, giving the project the actual go-ahead. A successful project start is crucial to the whole course of the project. Initiation particularly includes an exact definition and approval of the project. If the project scope including the individual goals is precisely and consistently defined, initiation is the valuable foundation enabling targeted work all daily leadership activities.

2. Project Leadership - Project Execution Management

The main phase is the actual phase where the project execution is managed. To ensure a highly efficient, proactive, and targeted leadership, it is recommended to base the leadership process on a standardized approach, a repetitive leadership process of measuring, evaluating, defining measures based on software-based project leadership system. Using both, leadership process and leadership system, has proven to significantly add to the chances of project success.

3. Leadership Closing

Every project must end with a closing phase. A deliberately scheduled closing resulting in an approved closing report avoids subsequent interventions. Apart from the closing report, the closing phase includes the acceptance by the client (e.g. customer, management), documented «Lessons Learned» and results that can be reused in next releases of the project or by other projects.

A proper closing phase is an important and highly beneficial activity in the organization’s Lifecycle Management process and discipline.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG , Wallisellen, Switzerland.  TimeWinner AG develops and markets the Internet-based Leadership $ystem TimeWinner.

• Modern project leadership systems provide fast and efficient access to all leadership information for the leadership team – from project manager to steering committee.
• All leadership information is merged into one system, making the project leadership system the central source for leadership information for all project team members.
• The project leadership system maximizes the transparency of project leadership across all activities, times and open issues. Particularly, this lays open repeated inefficiencies. Transparency is also important when project leaders change; for handover it saves time and money.
• Standardized, tool-supported and tool-enforced processes improve the attention of all people involved in and responsible for leadership and simplify the leadership task of driving execution.
• Intelligent interfaces allow relevant leadership data (e.g. master plans from MS Project or Open Workbench) to be imported into the leadership system.
• By using the possibility to connect leadership information and to define causal relationships, significant leadership scenarios or parameters can be traced back to the sources – a perfect instrument for modern risk management and internal control system.
• Formalized, documented and precise sources in the leadership system, make statements more reliable and secure. Project leaders are able to make precise statements referring to possible requests.
• All information is immediately indexed and permanently recorded. Redundancy is avoided.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG in Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner develops and sells Internet-based  Leadership System TimeWinner.

As a company we were able to win interesting Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) projects with reputable customers in the German speaking area allowing us to intensify our core subject activities. The experience we gained in our projects is continuously reflected in our blog. Like that it is developing into an experts platform discussing subjects related to beteo practices:

• Application Change and Transport Management
• Application Quality Management & Test
• Application Impact Analysis and Configuration Management

beteo business Blog in German und English targets at actively enhancing communication with customers, partners, and experts. At present, it comprises more than 100 specialized articles as well as three Software Miniguides and is read more than 300 times a day.

Some of the articles are real “bestsellers” and have even been published by the printed press.

• SAP Search Guide
  
• SAP Change & Transport Management - Efficient and Safe
• HP PPM Best Practices - the Key to Success
• Proof of Concept - Less Risk for System Implementations
• Is Tool-Supported Test Management Profitable?
• SAP Solution Manager - More Than Just SAP Marketing?
• E2E SAP Testing - Halfway Under Control?
• Lifecycle Management - HP BTO Makes it Happen

Well-known experts considerably contribute to inspiring our discussions and enhancing the scope of our subject. New authors who have joined us in the last few months are:

• Klaus Otto, Sales Manager Commercial Accounts, HP Software Germany
• Fritz Mosonyi, Senior Consultant, SPP Vienna
• Dr. Michael Loebbert, Coach & Management Consultant
• Robert Sutz, Business Manager, TimeWinner AG, Switzerland
• Gerd Fladrich, Test Management Expert, Fladrich Consulting, Munich

Step by step, we are getting closer to our goal to create a platform for a global exchange of information concerning an efficient application lifecycle management.

We are looking forward to your contribution to making beteo blogs a success, no matter if you are an interested reader, subscriber, author, or an opinion leader.

Let’s beteo – let’s be excellent to each other!

What do you wish for/from beteo Blog for its second year of life?

Leadership System - Core Features

The most significant benefit of a Project Leadership System comes from mapping, complementing and supporting the leadership work. This includes all project tasks during the different phases, from efficient initiation, to complete documentation, to closure. Providing a basis for leadership, the Project Leadership System stores all leadership-relevant information including milestones (e.g. imported via an interface from MS Project), or goals and execution management cycles.

In the process of running the execution of a project, coping with an awful lot of decisions, provisions, changes, risk assessments and notes is one of the leadership team´s tasks. The total of this information is not only stored in the Project Leadership System, but also indexed. So causal and restricting relations are recognized and visualized, resulting in reliable statements as to the target and result scores.

From Leadership Meeting Support to Risk Management

The range of features of a Project Leadership System covers all phases from the support of leadership meetings, active change management, progress quantification, conclusive reporting, uninterrupted documentation, traceability of the leading activities, up to a sophisticated risk management.

Proactive risk management is gaining importance. Regulations have come into effect which call on enterprises to improve risk management and establish „internal control systems“. Such legal instructions can be comprehensively met by a Leadership System.

Can Leadership be Quantified?

Where is the project right now? What about target and result scores? Quantification is a significant factor in project leadership work. But can leadership be quantified? Modern Project Leadership Systems prove it! They include features offering business management and portfolio managers a variety of alternatives for assessing and comparing. They allow the definition of project leadership parameters relating to quantifiable criteria such as progress, cost, performance, motivation, and change management. Cross-enterprise benchmarking of project execution management is enabled.

Project Leadership Systems - Summary

A Project Leadership System is not only able to map the complete process of running a project or project plan to a single system, but supports all people involved in leadership with automated processes comprehensively, directly and flexibly. The resulting significant work relief and time saving can easily be verified. In addition to an increase in efficiency and project information value, there is more time to focus on the essential: the proactive, targeted leadership of a project.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG in Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner develops and sells Internet-based  Leadership System TimeWinner.

It´s no secret to project managers, portfolio managers and people in charge of planning: According to new statistics, about 60 per cent of all projects are not successfully completed. „Not successfully“ in this context does not imply that the project failed altogether. The point is that the project management did not succeed in achieving the goals related to time, cost and quality. What are the reasons? Or to put it the other way round: Which are the factors leading to a successfully completed implementation of a planned project?

Managing a project means leading a project
The factors enabling successful implementation of a planned project are manifold and largely depend on the particular project. But there is one aspect which is crucial to success or failure of ALL projects: targeted and efficient leadership. This being accepted, is makes sense to give some thought to what leadership should be like, and how it should be implemented. Who has which competencies? Which methods are used for leadership? At which intervals do the responsible people meet? How does the management of pending items look like? Or is there maybe an explicit leadership methodology to be followed?

In order to support those in charge of planning, project managers as well as business managers in their daily work, so-called leadership systems are starting to get more commonly used. These systems systematically map leadership and leadership tasks related to a particular project. And, more importantly all leadership information is stored in a Leadership System, contextually interlinked and prepared to support the needs of particular target group.

The leadership system maps the leadership process
Usually, a person responsible for project planning works with a number of supporting software programs such as ERP systems, office applications, collaborative environment and project management solutions. As a result, the leadership information is often widely scattered in different systems making efficient and targeted tracking of data very difficult, for example when it comes to reproducing the reasons for a certain decision or a time delay.

How then can the process of leading, the action of leadership, be mapped and sustainably documented? In contrast to the different programs from which the leader gathers data and facts needed for decisions, the leadership system systematically maps the process of leading the project planning and answers, among others, the following questions: At which point of the project are we? How can we quantify progress and recognize, define and estimate possible risks and bottlenecks? How do we – in accordance with our particular Leadership Methods – usefully and permanently map changes, requests, decisions, events, risks or measures, all in the same place? As it is the leadership meetings that best reflect how leadership is implemented, leadership systems usually offer a variety of automated functions related to the planning, calling, conducting and documentation of meetings.

In the follow-up article Efficient and Targeted Project Execution (Part 2) I will focus on leadership meetings, proactive risk management and the question if there is a way of quantifying leadership.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG , Wallisellen, Switzerland.  TimeWinner AG develops and markets the Internet-based Leadership $ystem TimeWinner.