Change Project – Life Cycle
This blog series is designed to help in understanding the concept and usage of change projects in business configuration. The idea of this series is to explain the features of the change projects, and some do’s and don’ts while working on it. This blog series will contain following articles:
- Introduction – Concept and Usage
- Change Project Types – Remote or Local
- Change Project – Merge and Sync with Production
- Change Project Life Cycle
- Change Project FAQ Page
By now, you must be familiar with the change project processes and how to use it. This blog post discusses a change project life cycle in brief. In simple words, a change project process starts with its creation and ends with its closure. In between this life span, a change project goes through various phases. The picture below explains these various phases in an easy to understand flowchart.
From the above picture, it is clear that a change project can reside in a productive system for its whole life span without getting moved to a test system. This is true in case of a local change project. However, in case of a remote change project, the change project has few phases in a productive system and few phases in a test system.
What all are possible in different phases of a change project is explained in other pages of this blog series therefore I do not find a need to repeat here. Apart from this, many of your clarifications might get answered in the FAQ page.
Thanks, Saurabh,
Great blogs.
In the life cycle ,how can I test the Change Project in the test system before merging?
All the configuration changes effect in the test system immediately without merging?
Best Regards
Fred
Hi Fred,
The assumption here is that you have moved your change project from your production system to a test system. In this case, once the change project is in test system, if you do any change in the change project, this change will immediately reflected in the test system runtime. This means, you can test your changes in the test system immediately after the change. For doing testing in the test tenant, merging the change project back to production system is not required.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
I have not moved the change project from PRD to test.
I just copied PRD to Test.
When I copied PRD to Test , there was a ongoing change project.
The test tenant is not for Change Project.
Now the changes in the test tenant are not reflecting immediately.
Best Regards
Fred
Hi Fred,
In this specific scenario, the changes you make in this change project in the test system will not reflect in the runtime of the test system.
As you have made a copy of your production system into a new test system, so this new test system will behave similar to your production system. This test system will reflect and respond how your production system is with just one difference that it is now a test system and no more a production system.
Though you see the change project in this new test system but it is just a copy from your change project from the production system. In fact, this change project has no meaning in this test system, such as:
1. If you do any changes in this change project, those changes will not reflect in the test system runtime.
2. You will not be able to merge this change project back to production system.
In case you want to move a change project to a test system, copying production system is not the way. In one of the blog article, the process of moving a change project to a test system is explained in detail.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
Thanks for detail explanation.
The PRD was copied for some other reason.
Now I want to make some tests in the test tenant regarding some Fine-Tune activities.
And I want to reflect the changes immediately in the test system.
What option do I have?
Best Regards
Fred
Hi Fred,
In case you want to make changes to fine tuning activities which are in scope already in the main solution then this is very much possible.
Cloud for customer allows to modify fine tuning activities, which were in scope when the solution was set to live.
To do this, you can go to Business Configuration -> Overview work center view. Search for your activity in Business Configuration Search. If your activity is visible in the list below, you can go for change immediately action to modify it.
In case, your fine tuning activity was not in scope when your solution was set to live. And this fine tuning activity is expected to come as a result of some scope change in your change project, then you do not have an option to test this is this kind of test system.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
Thanks. Got your point.
Unfortunately, the activity sis in scope but it is not "Immediate Change Possible".
The button is grey out.
Thanks.
Fred
Hi Fred,
Generally, most of the fine tuning activities are enabled for immediate change. However, some are not allowed to be modified after go-live, due to simple reason of risk involved to impact the run time process of the system.
May you please provide some details on which activity you want to modify, I can check at my end in case if is allowed to be modified after go-live or if there is some other problem in your system.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
1. Edit Chart of Account
2. Edit account Determination Group and account assignment
3. Edit Expense Types for General
Best Regards
Fred
Note : This is for ByD.
Hi Fred,
Ok, so it is ByD system. As ByD system is a full business suite therefore there are certain activities not allowed for immediate change.
However, I checked the activities you are interested in and found that these are allowed to be changed after go live.
I will need to look into your system, if you do not see any risk then you can share the system url you are working on. Otherwise, you can raise an incident and SAP support will come back to you at their earliest.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
Thanks.
Already raised an incident.
Best Regards
Fred
Hello Saurabh
We need some clarification on Change project and requesting a New Test tenant from production tenant with complete copy of Configuration , Scoping ( from First implementation and New change project) Plus all Master and transactional data , meaning full copy.
Can you please describe the steps we need to follow to with screen shots
a. How to request a new test tenant from SCC- Do we need to click on the button " Copy Solution profile" of just request new test tenant and mention the source solution profile ID and Data Source field selection : Copy of Source System ( Copy Solution Profile)
b. Once we get the new test tenant and make changes to Fine tune configuration activities and perform our testing how do we merge the new change project Fine tune activities with configured values back into production tenant.
c. Will the Data Source field selection : Copy of Source System ( Copy Solution Profile) make a full copy of configuration, scoping ( of Change project and First implementation Project) and all master data and transactional data created till date from production tenant to the new test tenant which we would request via SCC.
Please provide your advice.
Regards
Thanks
Piyush Gandhi
Hi Piyush,
So I assume that you need a full copy of your productive system into a new test system.
You can do this, and for it you need to raise a request from service control center with following options:
System Type = Test System
Data Source = Copy of Source System
This will result in a new system which will be a one to one copy of your productive system however this new system will behave as a test system.
After this, you can do modifications in this new test system as per your need and requirement. As you also mention that you have some change project in your production system, therefore this change project will be available in your new test system. However this change project in the new test system will not act as a standard change project. It will not offer you any possibility to merge back your changes to production system. Also the changes you do in this change project in the test system will not be linked to the run time of that test system, i.e. changes carried out in that change project will not be deployed to runtime.
I think I answered the point c above, Copy of Source System will do the full copy with all PDI/SDK solutions. Copy of Source System (Copy Solution Profile) is usually used to move a change project from a production system to a new test system. This option will also copy the transactional data from production to test system, however it will only cope the selected solution profile into the test system. This option will not copy any PDI/SDK solution from production to test system.
Regards,
Saurabh
Hi Saurabh,
Thanks for this great series, i'm still going through it but have 2 questions:
1) For a scoping element change such as enabling "Performance and Usage Monitoring" - I think, that based on your criteria of not needing to test this, I can do this using a LOCAL change project and just merge it into the Productive system, and then perform the test afterwards (test is to run the report showing usage of C4C showing Business User IDs)
2) You mentioned that Data Migration activities have to be performed in a Change Project once the system is marked live. We need to add more accounts into the system over the next while so does each load require a change project? I was hoping we could just use Data Preparation activity (change immediately), to download the customers template and then use the Data Migration activity to import the template. Right or wrong?
1) You can use local change project, provided you do not need any specific testing before doing merge.
2) I doubt if you would be able to carry out migration in a "Live" implementation project situation. This was how it used to be, may be it has been changed to support this scenario. May be you can test it and update back here if this works.
Regards,
Saurabh