Most of the productive work in an SAP solution largely depends on the speed & effectiveness of the software that adds value to your organization. That is where a new methodology is flourishing exponentially in the development market. It is the agile practice that allows developers to achieve operating functionality in small iterative cycles. In this article, you will get to know how agile methodologies are helpful in SAP solutions.
Agile Methodologyin SAP:
Responding to market demand at a rapid pace is what customers, internal stakeholders, and organizations expect from any methodology. It shows how flexible the IT landscape has to be. Now the question is, how does this speed depending on market demand will be translated into the development of a new project? Another question that arises is whether the software can render added value faster and effectively meet the user requirements?
Customer Expectation:
In the SAP environment, a set of servers run the SAP software. These software solutions are the solution-center where developers create the client application. Responding to the client requirements faster is a practically new and hands-on implementation methodology that is driven by Agile. This iterative principle of development is based on the ‘lean’ principles for software development. It employs elements from ‘scrum’ as an implementation methodology. Organizations that use the basic SAP software consider the agile development methods as the baseline for software development. When agile development methodology merges within an SAP system to develop the products, we can name this ASAP (Agile System, Application, and Product).
Traditional ASAP Methodology
ASAP with Agile Methodology
Advantages of Agile methodology on SAP solutions:
- Using agile methodology, companies can deliver step-by-step production of any software in a ‘sprint’ of four weeks.
- SAP is looking for faster and effective ways to develop applications. Hence most of the development and deployment went priority-based. So, as per the client requirement, the development proceeds that brings in more client satisfaction.
- The agile system brings down the cost and increases transparency in the system.
- Through agile principles, the development and the testing team can easily identify the risks and quickly respond to them in manageable ways.
- The SAP is a vast system that requires every user to stay aligned with the goals. That is where agile systems can help in better coordination. Here all stakeholders, along with the developers can get involved from the initial start of the project.
- Agile systems also render flexibility in adapting to changes in every sprint of development.
- This methodology also helps in the frequent delivery of software.
- Adopting the agile development technique improves progress monitoring and its coordination at a granular level. It ultimately reduces the development time and cost.
Steps to implement Agile Methodologies in SAP:
Here are the steps one can follow on how to start with agile methodologies so that SAP-based product development becomes responsive according to the business needs.
1. Understand the agile principles:
It might sound obvious, but it's essential to have thorough planning of the initial iteration of the project development. SAP Waterfall project approaches are upfront and are not the case with agile development. The SAP agile methodology will break any project into small pieces. It makes it easily deliverable in more precise iterations known as sprints. In agile development, the first step is to learn how to accept and manage uncertainty.
2. Do the homework to understand the stakeholders of the project:
Not everyone thinks Agile to be a great principle of development. So, the second step will be to do some research on who within the organization will have an impact on the involved process. Before opting for the agile methodology, the software engineers should keep in mind about the execution management, development, business owners, and testing teams to come under the same page.
3. Develop the Business case:
Before embarking on the Agile development approach, it is necessary to realize what benefits it can bring to the organization and the software development. So you need to look at the current state and cross-check the following questions, like:
- How much would it cost to linger delivery of application?
- What is the expense of delivering applications now?
- How much fast could delivery translate to in return and profit?
- What is the cost to respond when a competitor takes market share because they got there first?
- How much money the client can spend on application development and testing?
- What is the current cost of application failure and downtime?
4. Start small:
You can never expect your team to switch to the agile development model overnight. Everyone needs time to adapt to the new methodology. Therefore, it is good to start with small development processes that can be managed through agile principles. Although Agile is a common approach these days, everyone aligned with the SAP development can gradually learn what works best for their specific teams.
5. Recognize the team potential and iterate the project:
SAP traditionally uses handing the requirements over to the development team. They then hand it over to the testing team. The cycle goes on around various other teams attempt to make the product the best and deliver what the client asked for. In agile principles, the SAP development team needs to have very open communication channels between the members. Also, it is very important to have trust among each member.
6. Creating Prioritized backlog:
Agile focuses on delivering the best product that will adapt as per the business requirement and working solutions. Here, a backlog of requirements is formed in the structure of user stories for particular personas. This backlog should get prioritized so that the product delivers the most business profit planned to be addressed at the first place. Then perform the sprint meeting to bring every member of the development under one page so that everyone gets aligned with the goals of the product development.
Tools for managing the SAP Agile: lastly, the development team needs the tools to manage Agile processes. The team can use dedicated tools like Jira & Rally for managing the process and present the expected workflows and proclaiming. But the team should also keep in mind the SAP and how to manage all those transports. That's where the team needs additional tools that can accomplish and automate transports and assure that the SAP system can handle dependencies accurately in case of larger SAP projects.
Conclusion:
Most organizations are inclined towards the agile development methodology. Therefore, enterprises that are utilizing SAP systems for their day-to-day development business are also turning towards agile development methodologies. So, every SAP professionals should also need to have a fair idea of how agile principles work with real-world application development.