Introduction
Requirements are usually captured very early in a project. In the absence of a requirements management tool, MS Excel is often used. SAP Activate even provides an MS Excel Backlog Template for this purpose. However, MS Excel is not really suitable for this task. In this blog, I would like to show you why you should use SAP Cloud ALM for professional requirements management, what the benefits are, and how you can best use it.
Typical Concerns
Let's start with some typical concerns about SAP Cloud ALM.
"It's expensive. We don't have budget for additional tools."
SAP Cloud ALM can be used without additional licence costs. It is already included in SAP Cloud Service subscriptions and SAP Enterprise Support. Check out the usage rights for more information.
"We don't have time to install and set up another tool."
SAP Cloud ALM is software as a service (SaaS). There's nothing to install and it works straight out of the box. Once you have requested a tenant, it takes a maximum of 30 minutes before you can start. Another 30 minutes for project creation, team definition and team member onboarding.
"The training effort is too high."
Compared to SAP Solution Manager, SAP Cloud ALM is far less complex. A two-day training course from SAP Consulting or SAP Education is sufficient to familiarise you with the full range of functions in SAP Cloud ALM. It is recommended for project managers, the PMO team, architects, and key users. In my experience, all the functions of requirements management can be explained in a one-hour training. If you just want to create a requirement - similar to MS Excel - the learning curve is less than 5 minutes.
"We cannot switch to SAP Cloud ALM because we have already started capturing requirements in another tool."
No problem! SAP Cloud ALM can import requirements using MS Excel or using an API. Entering the world of professional requirements management only takes a few minutes.
Best Practices
SAP Cloud ALM works best by first capturing requirements and then refining them with user stories. This is a prerequisite for working according to an agile methodology, but has also proven successful in projects using the waterfall model or an iterative-incremental approach.
These are the differences:
| Requirements (Functions) | User Stories (Experience) |
| Requirements are the overall goals and capabilities that the product must meet | A user story is a way to capture user needs in a simple, concise way |
| May be functional or non-functional | User stories deliver functionality directly to the end user |
| Written as: The product shall [perform a specific action or function] | Written as: As a [type of user], I want to [perform an action] so that [I can achieve a goal] |
| Tend to be more formal and detailed | Simple, conversational structure |
| Focus on specific features and functionalities | Emphasize the user’s perspective and goals |
| Encompass multiple features and constraints | Smaller in scope, addressing a single goal or interaction |
| Example: Display the name of each item in the shopping cart. | Example: As a customer, I want to be able to view the items in my cart so that I know for sure what I’m purchasing. |
In an agile project methodology, a user story is only large enough to be realized within a sprint. You can also assign tasks to requirements or structure tasks and user stories using subtasks.
Customers will have new requirements throughout the project. However, most of them are developed in Fit-to-Standard Workshops during the explore phase. SAP Cloud ALM can help you to make these workshops even more effective. For example, you can link requirements directly to business processes or document them in the tool. More on this in the next section.
Functions and Features
In this section, I will highlight some of the features and capabilities of SAP Cloud ALM.
Start faster with reusable data
In order to use the MS Excel backlog template, some data must be maintained in advance.
This task is time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone. Additionally, the same data must be reentered in many other places, such as the project plan or test management.
SAP Cloud ALM makes it much easier. At the start of the project, project members are simply entered with their roles and assigned to a team. SAP Cloud ALM automatically sends an email with an onboarding link - done. "Releases" are not just a name in a table. They have a start and end date, and they are linked to a deployment plan and the system landscape. SAP Cloud ALM even makes it possible to plan and control cross-project releases.
In SAP Cloud ALM, all solution scenarios and business processes of SAP Cloud solutions are available, instead of having to manually enter each end-to-end scenario. You can even copy and edit processes or model entirely new ones. The project manager then simply selects which requirements and processes are in scope.
All processes are available as BPMN model:
Process models make it much easier to understand business processes during a fit-to-standard workshop. In addition, requirements can be created directly for a process or process step, so you automatically know which requirement belongs to which process (and vice versa).
Documentation
In MS Excel, you only have one row to describe a requirement. SAP Cloud ALM, on the other hand, provides a rich text editor for documentation.
This is how it looks in MS Excel:
And this is what the documentation in SAP Cloud ALM looks like:
Of course, you could document the request in a word processor. But then you would have to find the document and open it. That takes time, you may not have the necessary access privileges, and who can guarantee that the request has not been changed since it was approved? For this purpose, SAP Cloud ALM provides a change history and an approval workflow.
History and Approval workflow
Scope creep is one of the biggest challenges in a project. According to Wikipedia scope creep is the "[...] continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project's scope, at any point after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled."
Once the requirements have been collected, a decision must be made as to which requirements are to be implemented in the project and which are to be rejected. This is why SAP Cloud ALM has a requirements status (In Refinement, In Approval, In Testing, ...) and an additional approval workflow (Ready for Approval, Approved, Rejected, ...). Once the request is approved or rejected, the approval status cannot be changed. And if someone changes the documentation or an attribute, you can see it in the history.
Views and Dependencies
MS Excel displays requirements in list form. In SAP Cloud ALM, you can view tasks and requirements in list form, as a Gantt chart or a Kanban board (for tasks and user stories). You can use the filters to narrow down the requirements that are displayed, and even the columns that are visible can be customized. Personal settings can be saved as views, so you can switch between them with a single click.
Sometimes there are interdependencies between requirements. For example, requirement A only makes sense if requirement B is also realized. These dependencies can be defined and visualized in the Gantt chart view.
If you were to display all the attributes of a requirement in a list, it would quickly become very complex. For this reason, there is a detailed view for each item, which displays all other attributes in addition to the documentation. Some values are set automatically, e.g. the ID, Changed and Created. The start and end date can be set manually or linked to a phase, sprint or milestone.
In this view, you can also see all links to other elements in SAP Cloud ALM.
Link and trace to other project-relevant elements
Processes and requirements define the project scope, which is the desired or planned outcome of a project. There are many other elements along the way, such as documents, test cases, defects, and tasks. SAP Cloud ALM's strength is that everything is connected. A project manager can see at a glance which processes are in the scope of the project, how many requirements and use cases exist for them, and whether they have been implemented, tested, and transported. Only with this information can project managers realistically assess the status of the project, identify bottlenecks early, and resolve problems quickly. To do so, they can rely on the comprehensive reporting capabilities of SAP Cloud ALM.
Analytics
I saved the best for last: With SAP Cloud ALM, all information can be analyzed and visualized in real time. Not only that: In some reports, you can drill down and navigate directly to the items displayed. This makes it easy to identify negative trends and eliminate bottlenecks. In the following, I will limit myself to a selection of analyses for requirements and user stories (there are many more).
In the first example, you can see the task status (user stories in this case) and distribution, sorted by workstream. It is also possible to see the distribution by team, by scope, and responsible person. Filtering options allow you to narrow down the results by task type, priority, time box, and milestones or tags, just to name a few.
Task Trend Analysis visualizes the cumulative progress and status of user stories (or tasks) over a given period of time.
A burn-up chart shows the work completed and the workload of a project over time. Agile teams use burn-up charts to track a project's progress in a simple and clear graph.
The Requirements Traceabilty report is one of my favourites. Here you can see all requirements, the requirments status and all related items such as features, user stories, tasks, and tests. One click shows the items details and let you directly navigate to it. You can see at a glance whether requirements have been correctly described, tested, and transported. The same report is available for processes.
Conclusion
SAP Cloud ALM makes managing requirements a snap. It is easy to use and, unlike MS Excel, is much more intuitive, has many more features, and is perfect for working with distributed teams. I haven't even mentioned a few things yet, like how to use requirements as a backlog, how to do sprint and release planning, or how to customize your project with tags.
One thing is certain: SAP Cloud ALM will take your project to the next level. What are you waiting for?
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