reverse business process documentation

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November 2011

Reverse BusinessProcess Documentation

(RBPD)Service Delivery Information Sheet


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Reverse Bus iness Process Documentation

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Table of Content

1 RBPD AT A GLANCE .......................................................................................................................... 3

2 USE CASES AND BENEFITS .............................................................................................................. 4

2.1 Get the initial solution documentation and Transparency on usage of business processes .... ........... 4 2.2 Accelerate Application Lifecycle management scenario usage......................................................... 5

3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................. 6 4 DELIVERY IN DETAIL .......................................................................................................................... 9

4.1 Preparation phase – Remote: .......................................................................................................... 9 4.2 Execution phase - Remote: ............................................................................................................10 4.3 Assessment phase - Onsite: ...........................................................................................................11 4.4 Follow Up phase - Remote: ............................................................................................................12 4.5 Delivery Process Overview and Timelines: .....................................................................................13


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This document describes the concept of the SAP Support Service “Reverse Business ProcessDocumentation“. It introduces and explains the concept of solution documentation for business processes inthe SAP Solution Manager 7.1.

This service provides best practices and knowledge transfer to your organization. It delivers a usage analysisof your productive system including the usage of custom code transaction and an initial Business Blueprintcreated out of the analysis. This can be used as a starting point for a entire solution documentation, solutionimplementation or a template project.

1 RBPD AT A GLANCE

As successful businesses grow and evolve, so do their IT solutions. Business processes are adjusted andenhanced as customers expand into other markets, regions or new segments. Within this constantlychanging environment our customers are searching for ways to increase transparency about their businessprocesses. Questions, such as ‘Which business processes are executed and how often?’ for example, needto be answered by the customer IT departments. Reverse Business Process Documentation (RBPD)discovers if business processes are used in a customer’s productive environment and answers the questionof how business processes can be documented, reflecting real usage from day to day execution.

Typical customer challenges like:

Non-standardized business processes across scattered business landscapes

Different implementation approaches and strategies

Missing link between business process documentation and technical realization

No flexibility for business process adjustments leads to a long time to benefit

These challenges will be addressed with the Reverse Business Process Documentation service by:

Creating a complete documentation of used business processes

Verifying real business processes usage

Laying the foundation for effective test management, business process monitoring, upgrademanagement or custom code management ( SAP Application Lifecycle Management scenarios)

Increasing transparency of business processes in a dynamically changing business environment


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2 USE CASES AND BENEFITS

From a generic point of view every process owner wants to have increased transparency on the usedbusiness process. Wouldn’t it be nice to turn the top-down approach of Business Process Management onits head and use software re-engineering capabilities to leverage the following aspects?

Reduce cost and process variation to become more lean Be in control of used business processes and know what is really going on Improve quality by comparing processes beyond KPIs Drive innovation by increasing the system usage and activate new features

The following two examples show you in detail how this service can help you to address the most valuableuse cases for Solution Documentation.

2.1 Get th e initial solut ion documentation and Transparency on usage of business processes

The configuration and use of productive systems is subject to permanent changes, which are often notavoidable or foreseeable. This is due to a changing business reality, which must adapt to legal requirements,market forces, or new internal goals. While the business processes often change, the documentation isusually not adapted accordingly. Consequently companies have no up-to-date information about theexecuted processes and configurations.

The RBPD service reflects the actual situation of the productive systems in a company. Characteristic ofRBPD is the scenario-based analysis of business processes and configuration by using predefined businessquestions to query the system.

With just 3 easy steps RBPD provides an up-to-date documentation of the solution as visualized in thefollowing diagram.

Steps : Perform Business Business Process Step Custom Transactions

Process Analysis Identification and Assignment Assignment


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2.2 Accelerate Application Lifecycle management scenario usage

SAP’s Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) is a standard for the implementation and operation of SAPSolutions. To optimize the usage of ALM scenarios detailed documentation of the solution is required.

RBPD is the starting point to create accurate process documentation to accelerate the introduction of ALMscenarios e.g.:

“Business Process Operations” by identifying the most used processes and process steps

“Upgrade Management” by providing transparency about business processes

“Template Management” by validating and comparing template usage

“Test Management” by supporting test scoping and reducing test effort

“Custom Code Management” by identifying custom code impacted processes

“Maximize the instant value of SAP Solution Manager capabilities now!”.


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3 METHODOLOGY As part of SAP’s Solution Manager 7.1, the Solution Documentation Assistant (SoDocA) functionality

contains a vast amount of auto-discovery rules to analyze and document the customer’s changing BusinessProcesses as they are used in their productive environment. Documentation of business processes as theyare executed in the system is achieved with just a few steps.

The Solution Documentation Assistant analyzes, in detail, data from productive systems where the businessprocesses reside and which need to be documented.

The foundation for the documentation of business processes is a standard process reference modelavailable in SAP’s Business Process Repository (BPR). SAP delivers the BPR in each SAP SolutionManager System (ST-ICO).

Characteristic of SoDocA is the scenario-based analysis of business processes and configuration by usingpredefined business questions to query the productive systems. These business questions are a set oftechnical rules reading and evaluating technical data sources (transaction code usage, statistical information,customizing and transactional business data and documents) for a selected time frame.

The technical objects that are analyzed and documented include: transactions programs and reports transactional data and documents (SQL) interfaces to connected subsystem (RFC function modules) BusinessAddIn status Java Web Dynpro Application, Java Web Dynpro Component, Java Web Service, Servlet,

iViews custom developments program flow and ABAP units execution (subroutines, classes & methods, function

modules,…) (New in SolMan 7.1)

Initial DocumentationReverse Documentation


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The analysis results referring to the SAP standard business process reference model can be converted intoa Solution Manager project and can be adapted to the customer specific business processes.Customer specific adaptation of a process structure means including customer’s transactions and programs,defining additional customer specific process steps or individualization of SAP standard process steps.To prioritize which business processes need an adaptation, SoDocA provides detailed information about theusage and frequency of used business processes. This includes also a deep insight into customer specificdevelopment and their usage penetration in the productive environment.

SAP provides analysis content with more than 14.000 inspections to jump-start the initial documentation ofany productive SAP environment. The overall number of SAP inspections will be increased over the comingyears to support the whole SAP Business Suite including the different industry solutions.

Apart from SAPs provided inspections, the customer has the full flexibility to define their own specificinspections to individualize the discovery process.

Independent of your current documentation, RBPD elevates you to the top-level of solution documentationfor SAP components with the lowest effort possible. Remaining at this top-level can be achieved byexecuting the analysis as often as it is required. Once successfully setup the adaptation effort remains at avery low level depending on the real business changes.

Save time, due to significant reduction of interviews with business experts and system users, in order tocompletely document the business processes and keep them at a high level. Moreover, for newly introducedand not yet documented business processes, SAP provides the analytical capabilities to identify anddocument these new processes.


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Set the course for

having a comprehensive representation of the currently implemented and used businessprocessesget full transparency about real usage of SAP applications with the most important businessprocessesenabling risk-based testing rather than testing everythinghaving a quick and easy way to get business p rocesses documented in SAP Solution Managerhaving a central entry poi nt to manage and monitor all SAP solutions and processesenabling quick re-use of processes for planned projects (eg. new implementations, upgrade,template-based rollouts etc.)easily creating a central basis for further ALM processes


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4 DELIVERY IN DETAILSAP Support has designed a service, RBPD, to assist customers with the approach, tasks and methodologyof documenting business processes. The RBPD Service guides the customer through the required steps totake full advantage of Solution Documentation Assistant (SoDocA). The categorization and assignment ofcustom code to the correct business process is performed in conjunction with SAP experts.The customer will be empowered to become proficient using SoDocA and will be able to re-document thebusiness processes on a regular basis.

The “Reverse Business Process Documentation” is performed for SAP Solution Manager release 7.1 andhigher SP4 is recommended but not necessary.

The service will be performed in four main phases:

4.1 Preparation phase – Remote:

To estimate the duration and to ensure that the technical requirements for the service are met, the customerreceives a questionnaire before the start of the service.

This questionnaire has to be sent back to SAP and will be the basis for the preparation call during which therough service agenda and content will be aligned.

Activities:

1) Preparation Call: Clarification of expectation, scope, business requirements, solutions, time & datewith the customer.

2) Check of SoDocA prerequisites: Technical set-up of Solution Manager and managed system,authorization, logical components, RFC connections, required system status, required notes …

3) Upload inspection content into customer’s Solution Manager4) Create an RBPD analysis project according to the confirmed and aligned scope

Resources & Roles

Customer: Project lead or service responsible (mandatory)Project sponsor (optional)Solution Manager responsible (mandatory)

SAP: Service lead (mandatory)TQM (mandatory)

Deliverables

Adapted story board in line with customer expectations and scope SoDocA ready system Analysis project in Solution Manager according to confirmed scope Aligned service schedule Kick off presentation


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4.2 Executi on phase - Remote:

Activities

1) Create an analysis out of the RBPD analysis project2) Export Analysis into Solar01 as “implementation project” (Blueprint)3) Prepare summary result slide deck for customer4) Request customer subject matter experts for focus area5) Prepare for assignment of custom code6) Prepare the system to create a new analysis project with the customer transactions7) Prepare, review and adjust Kick off presentation from preparation phase for customer workshop

Resources & Roles

Customer: Project lead or service responsible (mandatory)Solution Manager responsible (optional, incident)

SAP: Service team (mandatory)

Deliverables

Summary slidedeck SoDocA analysis result Implementation project (Blueprint) Aligned focus area Confirmation of customer participants

Adjusted “Kick off” presentation


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4.3 Assessment phase - Onsite:

Activities: Workshop 2 days:

Day 1:

1) 1 h: Kick Off meeting to explain the RBPD service methodology, deliverables,2) 1 h: Presentation of goals and objectives to customer3) 1 h: Present summary results of RBPD analysis performed in phase 24) 4 h: Demo of results and empowering of SoDocA, Solar01, Solman_Project_Admin in the system

Day 2:1) 4-5h: Assign customer objects in the focus areas and enable customer to create a new analysis

project including the customer transactions2) 1h: Prepare Wrap Up3) 1h: Wrap Up presentation to management showing highlights, issues and points where customer

must follow up.

Resources & Roles

Customer: Project lead or service responsible (mandatory)Solution Manager responsible (mandatory)Project sponsor (optional, results)Subject matter experts (mandatory)

SAP: Service team (mandatory)TQM (optional, results)

Deliverables

Implementation project including customer scenarios (generic & detailed focus area) Wrap Up


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4.4 Fol low Up phase - Remote:

Activities:

1) Create Report which includes all highlights and analysis results from customer’s systems2) Follow up call to answer questions about delivery and report

Resources & Roles

Customer: Project lead or service responsible (mandatory)Project sponsor (optional)

SAP: Service lead (mandatory)TQM (mandatory)

Deliverables

Report


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4.5 Delivery Process Overview and Timelines:

© 2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved. 3

Onsite visit

Remote

Review andadjustment of and

empowering infocus area

Remote Analysi s or

Preparation

Solution Manager Setup

Onsite

Follow-up

RemoteSupport

ConferenceCall

Result Presentation

- (5-1)weeks

RPBD Service Delivery Process Timeline and Deliverables

+ 2 weeks

Wrap Up anddefinition of next

steps

Anal ys is of Resul ts

Preparation of result s

Remote

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