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607 How BNSF Railway Was Able To Implement An ALM Strategy

BNSF Railway implemented an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) strategy using SAP Solution Manager to manage their complex SAP landscape. Solution Manager provides central documentation, project management, testing, change control, monitoring and more. BNSF leverages many Solution Manager capabilities like documentation, change management, and incident management. Solution Manager will also help with future upgrades, optimizations, and business process monitoring. The ALM strategy and use of Solution Manager has provided benefits like reduced maintenance time and increased system reliability.

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Abhishek Thakur
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120 views24 pages

607 How BNSF Railway Was Able To Implement An ALM Strategy

BNSF Railway implemented an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) strategy using SAP Solution Manager to manage their complex SAP landscape. Solution Manager provides central documentation, project management, testing, change control, monitoring and more. BNSF leverages many Solution Manager capabilities like documentation, change management, and incident management. Solution Manager will also help with future upgrades, optimizations, and business process monitoring. The ALM strategy and use of Solution Manager has provided benefits like reduced maintenance time and increased system reliability.

Uploaded by

Abhishek Thakur
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Orange County Convention Center Orlando, Florida | May 15-18, 2011

How BNSF Railway implemented an ALM Strategy with Solution Manager


Tim Hodge Jorge Cambero Governance Team- BNSF Railway

[ BNSF Railway at a Glance


A subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK), BNSF Railway operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with over 32,000 route miles in 28 states and two Canadian provinces. BNSF is one of the top transporters of consumer goods, grain, industrial goods, and low-sulfur coal that help feed, clothe, supply, and power America. BNSF has developed one of the most technologically advanced and efficient railroads in the industry. We are working continuously to improve the value of the safety, service, energy, and environmental benefits we provide to our customers and the communities we serve.

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ BNSF Railway SAP Landscape


Live on SAP since July, 2009 Our SAP functionality includes
Financials
FI, CO

Supply Chain
Biller Direct Supplier Portal E-Sourcing (CLM 7.0)

Human Capital Management


HR (PA, OM, Benefits) Payroll E-Recruiting (ERC 7.0) E-Learning
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
3

[ BNSF Railway SAP Landscape


Dashboards, Reporting and Analytics
BI, BOBJ

Data Management and Integration


PI, Informatica

System Management Tools


GRC Access and Process Controls SAP Solution Manager 7.0 SAP Test Accelerator & Optimization (TAO) SAP Test Data Migration Service (TDMS) Redwood Central Process Scheduling HP Quality Center and Load Runner

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ Technical and Functional Stats


BNSF runs a single production instance for all systems 4-tier system for every landscape (SBX, Dev, QA, PROD)
Dual Development landscapes for all environments N-1 Version Strategy 4 Netweaver Portal instances with TREX and single sign-on

Run on MS Windows 2003 OS SQL Server 2003 DBMS 287 Servers 70 Database instances 84 Clients

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ Managing Change
BNSF utilizes a Release Strategy to Run SAP
Daily Changes Emergencies and Unplanned Weekly Changes Master Data, Security, Reports and Low Risk Maintenance Support (5 per year) Break Fix, MS and SAP security patches Quarterly Small Enhancements, HR SPs, Kernel, OS/DB Upgrades, Technical and functional upgrades, New capabilities Year-End Support Packs, Year-End processing

In 2010 ...
Over 25,000 support tickets closed 292 OSS Notes applied 5,000+ Tests executed 4,000+ Transports to Production
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
6

[ Why an ALM Strategy?


Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) provides processes, tools, services, and an organizational model to manage SAP and non-SAP solutions throughout the complete application lifecycle The number of tools and changes going through our SAP landscape is not only overwhelming but complex Provides the structure to support BNSF processes for production maintenance and release of new functionality A must when complex integration exists with other IT tools that may not be supported by SAP or the SAP team

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ BNSF Tools Overview

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ BNSF Application Lifecycle Management

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Solution Documentation
Central documentation repository with check-in/check-out for productive assets SOLDOCA to periodically validate the accuracy of the solution Project documentation moves to solution after implementation Single source of truth

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

10

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Solution Implementation
Implementation Projects Blueprint and Development Project documentation, transactions and configuration MS Project for Project Management Sharepoint for Governance and projectrelated documentation

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

11

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Test Management
Use of HP Quality Center
Testing Defects Integrate to SolMan to build test cases Integrate to TAO to aid in automation

SAP Test Data Migration Server for data replication Load Runner for volume scripting

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

12

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Change Control Management
BNSF currently uses HP QC to manage change Will go to Charm 7.1 after ramp-up completes Goal is to reduce effort and risk around change control processes and faster deployment

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

13

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Change Control Management
Faster, safer deployment of release changes to production Traceability of changes Eliminates risk of human error

Application Incident Management


Integration of SAP Service Desk with Remedy for incident management

Training
RWD Uperform for training

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

14

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Technical Operations
SAP Support (Max Attention Customer)
SAP Router Configuration SAP Remote Logon / Service connectivity TQM: OSS message support SAP Service Delivery (IFM, BPPO, RPO, VTO, TIC, BDO)
Recommendations logged & tracked in SolMan

Monitoring and Alerts


Early Watch Alerts CCMS Alerts CA Wily Intrascope / Solman Diagnostics

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

15

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Business Process Operations
Business Process Monitoring
eRC pilot, others in the future

Production Job Monitoring


Financial Period End Close Assets C2C

Business Process Analytics

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

16

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Maintenance Management
Fortify for source code compliance Service Level Reporting IT Performance Reporting Central Performance History Performance Metrics Usage Metrics
eRC - How many applicants? Job postings?

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

17

[ Leveraging Solution Manager in our ALM Strategy


Upgrade Management
Downtime manager (future) Through BDO service, attained optimizations for:
Transports Application of support packs Upgrades

SAP recommendations stored in Solman for future use

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

18

[ BNSF Application Lifecycle Management

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

19

[ What lies ahead


Future expansion of the use of Solution Manager at BNSF includes:
7.1 Ramp-up ChaRM 7.x implementation Business Process Change Analyzer CTS+, CCTS implementation Central IMG Configuration Downtime Manager Data Volume Manager Data Consistency Manager KNOA Root Cause Analysis Hot News

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

20

[ Return on Investment
Benefits in the following areas Reduced application maintenance cycle due to Solution documentation Enhanced efficiency of support by having single source of truth Leverage business process structure to generate testing requirements in QC Increased system reliability by proactively acting on system reports Basis for business process optimization as a result of using BPM Protection of investment by better predicting changes going to production

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

21

[ Lessons Learned
After the initial implementation, Solution Directory was not implemented and this perpetuated the use of implementation projects to support production not a good practice Lack of process enforcement resulted in out-of-date documentation in Solman. This resulted in thousand of hours worth of clean-up Consulting expertise is hard to come by. Whitepaper benefits of Solman are easy to understand, much more difficult to implement

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

22

[ Lessons Learned (contd)


ALM Strategy becomes a must when managing multiple tools and integration of SAP to other IT applications Solution Manager at the center of SAP operations provides the structure to document and manage functional changes and technical performance Like many SAP applications before it, Solution Manager is now maturing in robustness and broadening in usefulness Similar to an ERP implementation, the holistic use of Solution Manager outweighs best of breed in specific areas (eg. CHaRM vs. other Change control software).

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

23

Thank you for participating.


Please remember to complete and return your evaluation form following this session. For ongoing education in this area of focus, visit www.asug.com.

SESSION CODE: 607

Real Experience. Real Advantage.

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