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How to release your changes in an Agile/ Scrum project

Bianca Koene, 06 April 2022

Currently I work for a customer that works Agile. This means we work in 2-weekly sprints, after which we bring tested functionality to production. We make a distinction between minors (every two weeks) and majors (every 6 weeks).

Because we also make quite some changes to page layouts, Software Development Kit (SDK) solutions and SAP Cloud Platform Integration developments, we do a regression test before every major. This way we make sure that already used functionality in production is not affected with a Go Live that is part of the major. So, this means only with the major we bring live (changes to) SDK solutions, SAP Cloud Platform Integration developments, change projects and changes to page layouts.

With the minor we bring live ‘simple’ functionalities, meaning ‘standard’ changes to production that are linked to for example workflow rules, code list restrictions, organisation changes, business roles, reports, so mainly functionalities that are not dependable on page layout changes and SDK developments.

For our customer, this is the best way for bringing ‘projects’ and functionalities live without impacting business processes that already use SAP Sales Cloud.

So, how does it work when you bring live changes that are linked to change projects, SDK solutions, SAP Cloud Platform Integration changes and page layouts? What is the right order and what are the steps to follow? I thought it would be helpful to everyone working with SAP Sales Cloud (or SAP Service Cloud for that matter) to summarise it in this blog.

Steps to follow when releasing changes to production tenant

  1. Create Transport Requests in Transport Management for the available transport objects like business roles, code list restrictions, Adaptation Changes, Workflow Rules, etc.
  2. Deploy Partner Development Infrastructure (PDI) and SAP Cloud Platform Integration solutions
  3. Bring Change Project Live
  4. Create a new Change Project
  5. Release Transport Requests

Create Transport Requests

For creating a Transport Request you have to go through the following steps:

Deploy PDI solutions (and SAP Cloud Platform Integration changes)

This is something that will be done by a developer. I am writing this from a functional perspective, therefore this and also SAP Cloud Platform Integration development deployments are not part of this blog. For our customer, deploying PDI solutions and SAP Cloud Platform Integration changes are done before the “functional” Go Live. This is because the versions of the PDI solutions need to be the same on your test tenant and production tenant before you can merge your change project. The PDI developer and the SAP Cloud Platform Integration developer coordinate their activities amongst each other.

Bring Change Project Live

These are the steps to bring your change project to production:

First you simulate a merge, with the following steps:

One of the most important things that is checked with the merge is if your PDI solutions of the test tenant and the production tenant are the same. They need to have the same name and version! If not, you cannot merge your change project. You first have to make sure the versions are in sync for both tenants. For this reason, we always first bring our SDK solutions live before we simulate a merge.

If the simulation was successful, you can start moving your changes to production with the following steps:

close activities change project 20220401 (002)

Please keep in mind that it is advisable to do a Merge of Changes outside the release windows of SAP. Because in the weeks where the version of your production tenant is lower then the version of your test tenant the merge might fail!

Create a new Change Project

It is important to create a new change project immediately after you bring your previous change project to production if you work with PDI solutions. Because if your developer starts making changes in the PDI solution, you have a difference in versions and you cannot create a new change project anymore, unless you release your SDK changes to production. And this is probably not what you want. Therefore, it is advisable to immediately create a new change project after you bring your current change project to production. These are the steps to create a new change project:

service control center systems 20220401 (002)

Release Transport Requests

Now that your change project is on production you can start releasing your Transport Requests:

That’s it. Happy releasing!

Bianca Koene

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