Release Management in SAP

David Osborne, Planning & Release Management,Canada Customs and Revenue Agency

May 20, 2003

Session 2909

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Agenda

• Canada Customs and Revenue Agency

• The Beginnings

• Upgrade

• Evolving to Release Management

• Challenges

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The CCRA at a glance

• $300 billion revenue; $1.2 billion a day

• 23 million individual / trust returns

• 35 million public enquiries every year

• 102 million travelers

• $4 billion operating expenses

• 52,000 employees at 750 sites across Canada

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CCRA Business Lines

1. Tax Services, 2. Benefit Programs and Other Services,3. Customs Services,

4. Appeals, and5. Corporate Management and Direction

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ITB at a Glance

3000 Head Quarters Staff(Employees & Contractors)

800 Regional Staff

52,000 PCs

2 Data Centres

7 mainframes

1600 servers

300 plus applications

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CAS at a glance

• “Wall to Wall” SAP (Finance, HR and Logistics)

• 500+ Business Process Scripts

• 16,500 named users across Canada

• 2 million dialog processes/day

• 1.8Tb database and growing

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The Beginnings

• Common Administrative Systems in Government

• Y2K

• April 1999 – Go Live

• August 1999 – HR Go-Live

• November 1999 – Agency: A New Governance Model

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Maturation

• April 1, 1999 – Go Live (4.0B)

• May 2000 – Platform Upgrade

• December 2000 – 50 LCPs

• November 2001 – Stabilization

• July 2002 – 4.6 Upgrade

• Present (current on support packages – planning ESS, etc)

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Release Management

• 1999 - Release Strategy Document

• 2000 – Using “Release Map”

• May 2001 – Planning and Release Management evolves as a team

• Sept 2001 – Upgrade tools and processes for release management

• Present – Release management is a “Way of life”

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Goal of the Release Strategy

• To work together to consolidate processes, procedures and solutions to support current CAS functionality and future initiatives

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Why a Release Strategy?• To ensure CAS work plan is linked to the CCRA goals and objectives• To better serve our clients and the Agency • To ensure funding is managed wisely • To ensure funding is available in a timely manner• To organize the scheduling of maintenance• To enhance CAS reputation

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Why a Release Strategy?• To identify links between initiatives to best serve all our clients• To increase awareness/knowledge between teams• To reduce emergency changes• To improve end user satisfaction• To provide employees with the tools and the information that they need to do their jobs

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Expected Results

• A central repository• Participation of all employees in CAS work plan• Consolidated implementation process for development and maintenance

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Next steps

• Map current procedure for gathering work in CAS• Solicit input from all employees for the Planning and Release Strategy• Establish criteria for prioritization of work

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Landscape Management

• Evolved from platform upgrade May 2000

• Development

–Two Sandboxes, Dev, QA and VT

• Production Support

–Dev, QA, PROD, Training

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Technical Landscape

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Change Management

Acquired Software Tool

- Comprehensive (linked to BPML)

- Complete repository

- Built-in workflow function

- Transport management Function

- Lack of reporting (needs to be addressed)

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Testing Management

• Already have an automated testing tool (Mercury)

• Moving to automate Integrated Testing as much as possible

• Facility to record and store tests centrally

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Emergencies

– Part of Release Strategy

– “Urgent” Criteria

– Change Control Board

– Added later on:

– Delegated authority

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Pieces of Release Management

Release Strategy

Change Management

Landscape ManagementTesting

Strategy

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4.6 Upgrade

• Impetus for change

- Required review of all documentation

- Needed tool to track and managechanges

- Had to test everything

- Requirement for landscape management

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Results…

• Work flow Change Management tool

• BPML recorded in tool

• Links between transports and documentation

• Complete testing documentation

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Testing

• Automated tools Mercury Suite

Comprehensive Test Set

– 5000 recorded unit tests

– 28 integration tests (end to end)

• Documented + signoff

• Visuals / status reports

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Evolving to Release Management

Release Strategy

Change management

Testing Strategy Landscape

Management

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Release Management

• Ability to plan into the future

• Sufficient development and testing time

• Priorities are managed better

• Multi-year view

• Maximize scarce resources

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Release Management Constraints

• Tax Program

–September to April – Warehouses

–January to May – Tax Centres

• Government Fiscal Year: Apr. 01 - Mar. 31

• SAP HR Support Pack Strategy

–Currency at mid year and year end

• Agency Anniversary: November 1

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Release Dates

• End of March

• End of June

• End of November

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Lessons Learned

• Incremental Steps

• Management Support

• Processes, not tools

• Clear Definitions

• Persistence

• 4.6 Trigger

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Challenges

• Staying the course

• Planning affects everyone

• Managing priorities

• Internal communication

• External communication

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Questions?

•Thank you!

• Contact me:

•david@osborne@ccra-adrc.gc.ca

Thank you for attending!Please remember to complete and return your evaluation form following this session.

Session Code: 2909