SAP is an integrated software solution for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) that
incorporates business needs of an organization. It has different modules like sales and
distribution, material management, production planning, finance and controlling, etc.
In order to keep pace with the current business needs, SAP ERP Software needs to be
upgraded at regular intervals not only to ensure maximum Return on Investment (ROI)
but also to be compliant to current rules and regulations while aligning to the
business processes.
Functional Modules in Sap- Why SAP Upgrade?
In order to meet the ever- changing demands of the market due to dynamic customer
requirements, it becomes necessary for companies to improve their services, provide
innovative solutions and build new business models. The SAP ERP software is getting deeper
business functionality provided by SAP AG. Hence, customers can adopt the newer
functionality in standard SAP to run their business. SAP Upgrade (Technical or Functional
Upgrade) is needed to modernize the SAP system, meet market requirements and provide
richer functionality to business users.
SAP Upgrades can be classified into following categories
Technical upgrade: This is considered to be the fastest upgrade and it does not disturb
the existing business processes.
Functional upgrade: This upgrade starts with a technical upgrade and allows new
functionality to be implemented as part of the upgrade project. This also provides with
the opportunity to convert many of the custom processes into standard functionality.
Strategic upgrade: This is driven by the enterprise SOA to provide more flexibility for
business innovation. Depending upon the requirement and budget, the organization might
decide to go for a strategic upgrade or a functional upgrade or simply a technical
upgrade.
Functional Modules in Sap - Overview of SAP Upgrade Steps:
Preliminary Planning:
— As a part of early planning, set up a reference system i.e. copy of a representative,
productive software system to obtain information related to detailed planning, cost,
effort estimations and impact analysis.
— For each productive software system, perform another test upgrade by building up a
“project system” from a copy of the software system.
— Working with a project system will serve as test-drive for the majority of project tasks
such as application adjustments and unit testing before the actual project landscape is
upgraded.
System preparation and stack level patch upgrade: This is the task of the Basis Team.
Some support packages need to be installed to a defined minimum level. To upgrade
to SAP ERP 6.0, you may need to:
— Change your hardware, operating system, or database platform
— Perform a Unicode conversion (if a customer uses multiple-display, multiple-processing
MDMP] technology or blended code pages to display languages with different character
sets).
Planning and preparation:
— Functional/business process people need to evaluate the modification adjustments
and whenever possible, go back to SAP standard.
— Make the modifications to reapply object changes, creating transports that you can
apply to subsequent upgrades.
— The functional/business process team and users must perform a functional test of the
upgrade and sign off on the SAP upgrade. This is to validate that the business
processes will be able to function.
Upgradation of the system:
— SAP provides all modified objects which are redelivered (in an upgrade or Support
Package) in the upgrade adjustment of transactions SPAU and SPDD. These
transactions help customers find which objects were modified.
— Objects modified according to the old system must be manually maintained after an
SAP upgrade has been run.
— Use transactions SPDD and SPAU to select these objects and modify them manually.
Upgrade Customizing for Existing Business Processes:
— In most cases, there is no need to change customizing settings for existing business
processes after an SAP upgrade. However, in certain areas, specific customizing
adjustments may need to be performed to ensure existing business processes and
standard SAP functions are running properly.
— Information about further application adjustment requirements is collected and
delivered to SAP customers via the ASU toolbox.
Testing:
This is the most important phase in SAP Upgrade as testing is critical to minimizing the
risk of business.
SAP Upgrade Testing : In A Nutshell Page 6 of 15
— SAP provides tools for planning and executing tests in a streamlined and cost-efficient
manner. SAP Solution Manager provides integrated access to a test organizer and
extended computer-aided test tools.
— It helps organize test cases and provide transparency on available manual or
automated test cases by documenting the cases according to major business processes.
These test cases can be used for unit tests and to define test plans for regression and
integration testing in the upgrade project.
— SAP develops certain patches to be run on the previous system (4.6c) to capture all
the customer-specific developments and then, they would run some patches on ERP
Central Component system. This would release the customer-specific development in
the new system (ECC). This is a very crucial and important check of the step.
Upgrading SAP System provides following benefits to the organization:
Operational Excellence: Introduction of new business functionalities and infrastructure
upgrade provides operational excellence to the business.
Business Strategy: Flexibility for future innovations( without disruptions).
Sustainability: Upgraded compliance with regulations and business and system stability.
SAP Upgrade Challenges and Motivation for Testing
Although each SAP Upgrade project is unique in its nature, below are some common
challenges faced by the organizations, which lead them to have robust testing mechanism in
place to make the upgrade success. Ideally, testing activities start when the project begins
and end a few weeks before going live.
Critical Technical challenges: In the technical upgrade, we may face many technical
challenges. For ex. it very important that all the applicable SAP add-ons and notes are
implemented.
Business challenges :
— Change Control: During the upgrade, getting support from the business is very critical.
The downtime requirements for the project should be conveyed in advance and the
business acceptance should be secured, so that the business can plan their activities
accordingly.
— Compatibility of third -party systems: Interfaces are very important in any project. A
separate strategy to be formed to check the compatibility with the SAP upgrade, a
preplanned activity to be carried out to upgrade the interfaces to match the SAP
upgrade, etc may be in the form of interface patch upgrade, interface version
upgrade, etc.
— Parallel projects: There is a possibility that along with SAP upgrade; some other
business transformation programs are going on in an organization. Utmost care needs
to be taken while driving such initiatives together. An efficient Project Management
Office team and Proper governance mechanism need to be in place to handle the
various business project requirements.
— Third- party vendor integration: Third parties include those who manage the thirdparty
systems like banks, customs, customers, etc.; and also the different vendors
who support the hardware and other non-SAP applications for the client. Through
planning of the project activities and communication of the same to all involved
parties will help to mitigate business challenges. All the deliverables and their
required timing should be clearly planned and communicated well in advance, so
that each participant is aware of his role and requirement. Third parties must be
made available during the post go-live phase as well in order to resolve any issues
that surface after the go-live. Thus, the success of the upgrade project depends on
how well we manage this integration.
SAP Upgrade Testing : In A Nutshell Page 8 of 15
Testing SAP Upgrade:
The successful execution of an upgrade project depends on many important factors. One of
such important factor is the Testing of the SAP Upgrade project., SAP upgrade testing
provides confidence to the business, that the new or changed operations of the upgraded
SAP system will deliver all functions as supposed to, with the desired performance as well
as remedy for any new problems and errors as early as possible. Although the goal is to test
every possible aspect that could be affected by the upgrade, testing is always a spot check.
Functional testing: The purpose of this testing is to ensure proper functionality and
accuracy of the software. The focus is exclusively on functional business processes and the
purpose is to ensure that they work correctly and as expected by the user even after the
SAP ERP Upgrade.
SAP Upgrade Testing : In A Nutshell Page 9 of 15
Developer Test: These tests are carried out by software developers at the technical
level. Besides functional aspects, these tests also include technical aspects applicable to
upgrade if customer-specific modifications need to be adjusted or new modifications are
adopted during the upgrade project.
Unit Test: They are the lowest level of functional tests which encompass individual
transactions or particular module from SAP ERP. They are also called as component
tests. It is normally the first test that is completed during the configuration and is
focused towards the program’s inner functions, rather than the integration.
Scenario Test: Assessment of multiple, related transactions within a module (solution
area) or business process that spans multiple areas within SAP ERP, such as Order to
Cash or Procure to Pay. This testing is usually done in the Development environment to
prove out requirement.
Integration test: This testing is similar to scenario testing except that it is typically
done in the QA environment and uses real data from production environment. An
integration test examines correct execution of business processes spanning across
various SAP ERP business areas or other SAP and third party application. This type of
testing is cross functional; hence different test team members must be involved in this
type of testing. In this testing, configuration of the various modules and their
integration points are checked thoroughly.
User acceptance test: Functional tests typically performed during the later part of the
upgrade project where end-users test the scenarios / processes / transactions they are
going to use in their daily work and ensure that these are working as per user
satisfaction. Primary goals of user acceptance tests are to receive the formal
acceptance of the business units and to detect usability problems such as dialog design
and system response time from an end user perspective. These days, automated User
Acceptance Test’s are in big demand from the business user’s group.
Regression test. In the upgrade process, the last test is conducted to ensure that
previously tested upgrade and functionality still works as expected and no defects are
introduced in production instance. Regression tests validate that the mapped
functionality and core business processes were not affected and can be executed with
correct system behavior, in regression testing selected tests that were already run
successfully in the testing instance, are repeated to make sure that no new errors were
introduced to the updated production instance.
Technical Testing:
This type of testing tries to identify bottlenecks that slow down the system. Functional
testing ensures that a business process works correctly; technical testing ensures that a
business process works quickly. The focus here is to demonstrate how the system behaves
routinely and during high-peak load. During the high peak load.
Technical System Test: Systems tests are known in the SAP environment as technical
system tests. Instead of looking at the functionality of the software in isolation,
technical system tests check the entire system. I.e. data consistency, database,
application servers, interfaces, network, printers, etc.
Performance test: It is a technical system test that measures the response time of the
system under test. It is also called as load, volume and stress test. The major purpose of
this test is to ensure that after an upgrade, the SAP infrastructure is still capable of
handling the expected workload. During such tests, a large number of transactions are
processed against the
SAP ERP application in order to see what the result will be. In
SAP Upgrade Testing : In A Nutshell Page 10 of 15
most cases, these types of tests are performed through the dedicated test-tools like HP
Load runner that are able to simulate a large number of client systems.
Security Test: These types of tests are carried out to check user access and
authorizations, data security as well as other security related aspects.
Test Approach: Test Approach talks about how the testing activities will be carried out in
each phase of SAP Upgrade. Testing activities will be carried out either manually or
automatically.
Manual Test Approach for SAP Upgrade Testing:
Adequate testing requires a lot of effort and human resources. Traditionally, testing has been
carried out manually. In manual testing, after the test cases have been defined, all the test
activities are performed manually by testers and test results are recorded manually. Below
are the manual test activities the testing team will perform in the SAP Upgrade testing
project with respect to each phase of ASAP upgrade methodology.
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