SAP Cloud ALM: end-to-end user journey for testing process of S/4HANA Cloud

Introduction

In this blog post we will describe testing phase of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 3SL Implementation or Upgrade projects. To start described activities following pre-requisites are necessary:

• All 3 tenants (DEV – TEST – PROD) of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are provisioned;
• Integration between SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP CBC and SAP Cloud ALM is set;
• Test data (both master and transactional) are available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud TEST tenant;
• Unit tests are done in SAP S/4HANA Cloud DEV tenant.

Before we start our journey, let´s highlight small piece of theory. During the testing activities we need to separate 3 types of tests:

• Unit tests are the smallest and simplest testing activities, which have to be performed by developer/configuration expert right after implementation of certain functionality in DEV system;
• Test automates are pre-delivered by SAP for certain solution processes, and can be launched either from SAP S/4HANA Cloud or from SAP Cloud ALM. Results are to be documented in Cloud ALM;
• Manual test cases imply sequence of actions in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, during which correctness of business operations to be checked. Results are to be in SAP Cloud ALM.

Preparation to the testing activities

First of all it is necessary to identify test scenarios – pick basic processes & minimum requirements for the project to succeed. To document this, it is recommended to use Requirements application of Cloud ALM:

Test scripts, which are available for many Scope Items in SAP Best Practice Explorer can help to define such requirements:

In the next step it is necessary to perform pre-requisite to work with SAP S/4HANA Cloud test automation tool – set up users for the test automation tool. Technical details can be found in SAP Activate Roadmap.

Once it is done, we need to access the SAP S/4HANA Cloud application Manage Your Test Processes to review and adjust available test automates. Accelerator, available by the link at this SAP Activate roadmap step can be helpful for this activity, as it contains full and updated list of all available test automates.

Then we need to synchronize standard automated test-cases (test plans) between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud ALM. This function is available in Test Preparation app of SAP Cloud ALM, and as mentioned earlier there is a possibility to launch test automates right from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, but results to be documented in SAP Cloud ALM, therefore it is recommended to do all operations from SAP Cloud ALM.

After the synchronization we can proceed with import of relevant automated test cases´ content in Cloud ALM in the same application:

Now we need to create manual test-cases. It is possible to create every test case from the scratch and describe it in Cloud ALM:

Another option is to import Test Scripts from the SAP Best Practice content for SAP S/4HANA Cloud into SAP Cloud ALM, how described in this SAP blog post.

When all tests are created, they have to be assigned to requirements and user-stories. Please, refer to this SAP blog post for the detailed information about the procedure.

The last and quite obvious step of this phase is to set all created tests to “Prepared” status in SAP Cloud ALM:

Tests execution

So now we have 2 types of tests ready to be used: automated and manual.

For automated test-cases we trigger their execution from Cloud ALM Test Execution application:

Once the run in SAP S/4HANA Cloud of such test-case is finished, results will be available in the same application of SAP Cloud ALM.

Manual test cases have to be executed accordingly their descriptions (available in SAP Cloud ALM) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and the results to be documented in SAP Cloud ALM.

In case error identified during test execution, defect to be created (in Cloud ALM Test Execution application) and followed-up:

If defect requires SAP Support, it is necessary to open incident in Service Now system.

Once issues are resolved, defects get closed and retest is needed.

Additional information about defect management can be found in this SAP blog post.

Transport configuration

The logical step after testing procedure is to move transport requests, which contain tested changes from SAP S/4HANA Cloud TEST tenant to PROD tenant.

This should be done via SAP S/4HANA Cloud ATO tools:

Firstly we move transport requests to PROD system buffer and import them then to PROD system itself.

Conclusion

In the next SAP blog post we will extend the process with 3rd-parties tool, which can also be integrated in the testing flow.