SAP upgrades- Yes, we know that upgrades need extensive testing - someone expert in SAP upgrade stated that SAP upgrades is like providing SAP system a new heart and lung transplant hence any organizations having SAP-based business solutions will be involved one point of time to upgrade SAP solution/ project with new heart and lung transplant .
As we understand planning is important that include the test strategy of upgrades so as its planning. In this article we will discuss what the best suitable test strategy and suitable measurement to ensure testing being conducted on the SAP grade is successful, optimum and effective either be it improvements through enhancement SAP packages, or an installation of new components per the needs of the organization.
Needless to say, the success of SAP upgrade projects relies on efficient and comprehensive test planning of testing activities that start from the project kick-off itself and last until a couple of weeks before the project go live date. Organizations involved in SAP upgrade projects find difficult over the testing of the upgraded and the unicoded SAP-based business solution.
First question comes how much, when and detail scope effort involved in testing. To allocate a wise dollar, important that the optimum testing approach is defined upfront for the SAP upgrade project and then controlled and followed.
Testing involves careful allocation of project resource with a comprehensive plan and the project cost.
For SAP upgrade test strategy it is not simply just "grab a product manual and jump on the system to start tests" following points listed from industry experiences and we believe should be considered to SAP upgrade strategy
1) Detail project plan to fit appropriate testing in phase based approach
2) Effective change management strategy with appropriate resource commitment
3) Upgrade documentation and existing system functionality document/ blueprints
4) SAP upgrade methodology /upgrade consultants knowledge on the existing system infra and landscape
5) List main business drivers for the SAP upgrade
6) Ensure that new upgrade environment mirrors your existing environment, with sandbox, development, QA, and production systems in order to ensure a smooth cut over.
7) Wherever possible – combine Test Plan for a "functional" and technical features during system and integration tests phase
8) Ensure Unit test during the Unicode conversion process
9) Ensure 50 % of data coverage for functional business process coverage and 110% coverage for non functional performance tests
10) Ensure a possible access to Solution Manager prior and during test phase of upgrading – try this it is vey effective if Test team member know internals of SolMan – use BPCA or if practical use test automation
11) Ensure before Integration phase, objects, processes and methods tested with reasonable coverage in the Unit tests phase.
12) Ensure End-user can lend a useful hand during later phases of tests
13) Ready with an in-depth skills "gap analysis" to determine which skills you can to assist you in testing e.g. basis, functional and end-user business users other than testing team members.
14) Bring user testing early you may say "user training." – it is advisable to allocate a complete Sanbox for training - log defects if they identify during sandbox user training so known for later stages of the project testing
15) Create role-based test role and mimic it like real time business processes
Low level points that we believe should be considered for an effective test strategy on upgrade-
Each Incremental test approach on Sandbox -
Sandbox testing is to ensure the important scope of changes and any issues in the upgraded or/ and unicoded.
It is recommended that some scope preparation on the project tests activities starts in parallel while the sandbox is being built and assisted by functional consultants. Hence when Sandbox is finished & ready test can case set is ready to start on the sandbox testing- it help is saving time.
Further, it is quite effective in the test strategy to list important tests (high priority- critical and important tests) to identify transactions of the business processes from the various functional teams to ensure the extent of changes in the new system is evaluated early with reasonable coverage.
This test strategy can help ensuring the frequently used SAP standard and custom transactions for expected results.
Suggested a parallel / comparability testing here – to ensure usage from system are intact, it depends upon the nature of upgrade however it is advice to consider a comparability study between to boxes
Check critical interfaces early with reasonable test, -All the critical interfaces should be identified and their connectivity must be established with corresponding test systems. e.g., inbound, outbound, file-based, database connects – this is more important if the upgrade involved any of the OS updates along with system
Cross reference matrix between old and new systems for interfaces is maintained with responsibilities agreed to and from side of the systems impacted.
If the number and nature of defect is high, the testing scope should be accordingly enhanced to achieve a successful testing, this assist increasing the confidence of stakeholders. Next article will from an experiences SAP upgrade consults about Sol Man best practices BPCA and SAP Tao usage in upgrade ----
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