Using Rational Unified Process in Project Planning of XI Implementation

[Former Member]

One of my XI implementation projects has approximately 300 to 400 interfaces of varied degree of complexity as system landscape had Sap Systems, Legacy Systems, and Custom built web services and also involved SAP to NON SAP communication as well NON SAP to NON SAP communications. This project involved build of various business scenarios, various types of input and output data type and format, various mode of communication such as synchronous and asynchronous ,polling & alert mechanism, event triggers, web services & model, and error handling framework. One of the complex parts of this entire project was to build a project plan using Rational Unified Process as  one of most sought after  project milestone by Client.Rational Unified process is basically divided into four phases :

• Inception.
• Elaboration.
• Construction.
• Transition.

As we were doing preparation for business blueprint signed off and realization we learned that each phases has some key deliverables which are summarized as follows.

Phases	Key Deliverable
Inception	Prototype and Scope Baseline
Elaboration	Architecture baseline and design
Construction	Development Baseline and build
Transition	Go Live and Hyper care

Each of these phases is associated with common disciplines:

• Requirements
• Analysis and Design
• Implementation
• Deploy
• Configuration and change Management
• Project Management

The ground rules for this exercise are:

• One phase should finish before other begins.
• Overlapping dates between two phases are not allowed.
• One cannot go back from one phase to other as plan progresses.
• Break down each phase into two or more cycles containing each discipline and in between the cycles within a phase carryout an iteration assessment and move forward.
• Results from previous assessment within a phase goes to next cycle  and necessary corrective actions needs to be taken before that phases gets over.

We asked key stakeholders that why we are giving so much importance to RUP and understood that the prime objective of this exercise is to induce as much iteration possible and to have feedback from this iteration as assessment and this approach forms a closed loop control system with feedback loop each time pointing out gaps and scope of improvements and margin of error and deltas reduces between actual and planned.

Example

 

We have tried to ensure that we cover as much XI implementation activities within the given framework as summarized below.

Phase	Activities
Inception	Prototype Build Choose selected interfaces of varied degree of complexity for inbound and outbound scenarios related to integration scenario. Record the results of build. Do iteration assessments. Scope the work packages to be delivered. Milestone-Establish scope baseline.
Elaboration	Use iteration assessments in inceptions. Build elements of improvement from assessments and spread it across all disciplines. Emphasize on business processes, business scenarios, form some sort of class diagram, sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams using ABAP objects concepts and events. Do an iteration Assessments as well form feedback loop Scope all interactions with business events. Milestone-Establish Architecture baseline.
Construction	Use iterations assessments in elaboration. Spread all elements of improvements to all disciplines. Initiate build cycle with integration scenarios for actual realizations. Do an iteration assessments and store results. Milestone-Establish a development base line and augment on this baseline in all implementations for build cycles.
Transition	Use iterations assessments in Construction. Spread all elements of improvements to all disciplines. Initiate pre go live analysis and checks. Initiate Go Live cycle and gradually built in hyper care for Go-Live. Do an iteration assessment and gradually roll out Milestone-Role out of all interfaces and system stabilization

Disciplines Mapping with Deliverables

Disciplines	Deliverables
Requirements	Functional specs& Business Logic validation
Analysis & Design	Technical specs&Design
Implementation	Build PI Objects Unit Test Integration Test UAT
Deploy	Transport Strategy and Transport Tracking process. Usage of CTS plus and Transport express.
Configuration and Change Management	Change Management Process Escalation Process Steering Committee meeting Change control Board Meeting Issuelog Change control Process
Project Management	Project Plan: Risk Mgmt plan and risk register Quality Mgmt Plan and Quality metrics. Comm. Mgmt Plan Status review

This actually resulted in lot of challenges but it was very steep learning curve and sort of out of box  thinking  .There may be still improvements can be suggested but it is for me just an entry to RUP world where i could see both RUP and SAP going hand in hand for implementaion project.