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Posted by Hannes Kerber in SAP Solution Manager on Aug 18, 2013 11:00:59 PM
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As promissed in the last blog post I want to try to cover some more strategic aspects around retrofit and how to use it
and what processes to put in place around the tool. To do so, I want to tackle the below questions:
Who is responsible for the execution of the retrofit?
What does this mean for my tool setup?
postpost
What is the right time to perform retrofit? Are there different strategies?
Do specific guidelines exist?
What are generic rules I can apply to my synchronization process?
What impact does retrofit have on my release landscape?
Is testing impacted?
Is cutover to BAU/Maintenance/Production Support affected?
How can I setup a governance and reporting process around retrofit?
Let's begin with responsibility:
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There exist some best practice recommendations which are widely used in customer scenarios, but as usual there
are always some very specific requirements or circumstances which prevent those best practices from being
implement.
The most obvious (and probably in terms of knowledge and acting in conflict situations most clear) approach would
be that the developer of a change (or transport) is also responsible of retrofitting this change/transport to the
project/release landscape. This gives the advantage of having someone take care of the task who as actually
provided a bugfix or smaller enhancement to business and the currently productively used IT solution. So in case of
any conflict situations, issues or estimation the developer is the most knowledgable person of the change which has
been performed.
To enforce this, the retrofit activities can be integrated into the whole build and change management process and with
a small condition on change level a change can not be completed before the retrofit has actually been performed (or
the necessary indicators have been set).
The second most common approach is a dedicated retrofit team taking over the tasks of retrofit and performing it on a
regular basis. This has he advantage that the developers can focus on the task of bringing improvements, continuity
and new innovations to business. Additionally those teams become more knowledgeable over time and develop a
certain routine by performing retrofits more often and on a regular basis. Also any governance around this process is
easier to achieve and the community to contact is much smaller. Nevertheless, in conflict situations the developers
need to be contacted anyway to solve critical situations or assist with technical details and testing/verification of a
replicated change.
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3. What is the right time to perform retrofit? Are there different strategies?
I have a clear opinion on this. The sooner, the better. But let's take one step back - what is actually the first
possible time to perform a retrofit, meaning from what point in time on, is the data available that actions can be
executed?
Whenever an original transport request is released (not a ToC) the retrofit data for this transport is created. This
includes all information and is only created at this particular point in time. That means, e.g. for a Normal
Change in ChaRM, when a change is successfully tested and ready for production it can be retroffited - and it
should be! As all functional testing cycles should usually be covered with Transport of Copies (Test Transports)
only the finally released transport request appears on the retrofit list and is therefore ready for retrofit.
I know that many customer only perform the retrofit when a transport request really reaches the productive
environment. But why not before?
Let's look at 2 cases:
1. Urgent Change - There is no transport of copies, but if really used as urgent change the transport won't take
two long to get to production, even if there are multiple cycles. Here it is just fine to perform retrofit for all
transports after a successful test and almost deployment to production. In the end, if really used as urgent
change, the urgent change won't have that many cycles as the scope is very limited, the bug to fix very clear
and the amount of change to be performed very small.
2. Normal Change - The transport might take some time to go to production. But why not retrofit? It is clear
that it will go to the production environment and in the end only once the change is tested successfully the
transport will be released and therefore be ready for retrofit. So it will go anyway - so perform the retrofit right
away.
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Comment on 'Retrofit: How to perform retrofit
from an End-User perspective'
New Post on Strategic Aspects of Retrofit...
But as a summary: It always depends on the change process which is implemented and the implications
certain technical actions and activities have and what a transport request release means in the context of a
change. That is why it needs to be looked at individually and cannot be generalized. But just as a way to think
about it: if a change is successfully tested, the transport request is released - what prevents it from going to
production (there are always cases...but think about the change process setup?
I hope that these aspects can give some input, thougts or ideas to you...feedback and additional questions are very
welcome!
Next time is helper time. I will provide a little insight to helpful reports, own customized transactiosn or helpful
BADI Implementations which are regularly used.
Cheers...
3271 Views
Products: sap_solution_manager Tags: charm, solman, ', retrofit, solutionmanager, solutionmanager7.1, solutionmanager71,
changecontrol, service_and_support
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5 Comments
Shehryar Khan Oct 3, 2013 3:08 PM
Hi Hannes,
Thanks for the insightful blogs on the topic of Change Management through Solution Manager.
We are currently finalizing our dual track strategy and as part of it, I wanted to address application
specific change management guidelines especially for applications like BW/BPC. You mentioned
here that there are certain limitations for BW and customers need to contact SAP for more
information. Is there a specific person/team we need to approach?
I have created a thread
Hi Hannes,
Good blog on Retrofit functionality. Can this also be extended during the upgrade project, where we
need dual development in two different versions of SAP ( say ECC 5.0 and ECC 6.0).
Thanks and Regards,
Binil
Like (0)
Raufman Brasse Apr 4, 2014 4:44 PM
Can the retrofit tool be used to sync changes between two landscapes?
For example, we have ERP in one landscape (DEV, QAS & PRD). We also have HCM running in a
separate landscape with its own DEV, QAS & PRD systems. There are some changes that need to
be synchronized between these two landscapes. Can retrofit help us with that?
Thanks,
Roy
Like (0)
Billy Warring Oct 2, 2014 2:36 PM (in response to Raufman Brasse)
I believe retrofit is intended to work as a 1 for 1 technology, so ERP to ERP not ERP to HCM.
Like (0)
Billy Warring Oct 2, 2014 2:37 PM
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