Today, most organizations have multiple system landscapes that frequently change. It is often difficult to keep track of these software changes. Imagine a tool capable of tracking system changes and generating a detailed report that covers all the changes happening in the landscape: Quality Gate Management is that tool.

Quality Gate Management, which is included in SAP Solution Manager 7.0 enhancement package 1, helps you achieve a full overview of all changes implemented in your company’s system landscape. It provides a detailed report covering all the changes that occur across the landscape, including information such as the change owner and source system. Within Quality Gate Management, quality gates control the change flow across the system landscape, which helps your company maintain change transparency.

You can use this tool during a project implementation to keep track of the frequent changes happening in the system. You can even create particular milestones per your project’s specifications and deadlines. The quality gates are monitored by the quality manager and a quality advisory board (which can be one individual or multiple people) who are responsible for moving changes across the system landscape so that only correct and required changes will go to the production system. I’ll show you the prerequisites and configuration steps involved in accessing Quality Gate Management, its interface, and its use. I’ll also review the Change Management Work Center and how it relates to Quality Gate Management.

Introduction and Prerequisites of Quality Gate Management

Quality Gate Management is only available in the Change Management Work Center in SAP Solution Manager. It monitors all the various systems in the landscape (e.g., Development, QA, and Production). Its functionality begins when the quality manager approves and opens the quality gate, which is a checkpoint for change or transport requests. After this, the quality board approves and changes the quality gate status, providing a foolproof method of transparency.

Quality Gate Management also provides guideline documents for changes across the landscape and automatically uploads them at the quality gate for the quality gate advisory board, which helps reduce communication time. In addition, a detailed report on system changes is available at any point during the execution of the project. The report includes the change and the transport request details such as the transport request owner and date and time stamp.

To use Quality Gate Management for an implementation project, you need to provide certain data. The following are the three prerequisites for setting up Quality Gate Management:

• Assign the Quality Gate Management roles
• Configure the system landscape and the Transport Management System (TMS)
• Create a project in Project Administration

Assign the Quality Gate Management Roles

SAP delivers roles for Quality Gate Management members (i.e., the quality manager and quality advisory board members) that need to be assigned to users. How many users have each one of these roles is dependent on your particular situation and requirements:

1. SAP_SM_QGM_ALL — quality gate manager (this is a lower level role than the quality manager)
2. SAP_SM_QGM_TRANSPORT — transport activity user
3. SAP_SM_QGM_STATUS_QM — user to set quality gate status (i.e., the quality manager)
4. SAP_SM_QGM_STATUS_QAB — user(s) to set quality gate status (i.e., a quality advisory board)  

Note that these roles should be assigned to users in addition to the basic work center role SAP_SMWORK_BASIC and other roles per your company’s requirements.

Configure the System Landscape and Transport Management System

The system landscape and the TMS need to be set up by the Basis team before Quality Gate Management can be used. First, if they haven’t already, the Basis team must set up Remote Function Call (RFC) generation and the basic configuration (e.g., initial system landscape setup using transaction SMSY) between SAP Solution Manager and its satellite systems. In addition, a logical component should be created for any involved satellite systems, such as SAP R/3 or SAP ERP. The system landscape configuration of transporting requests (i.e., the TMS) should match up with the logical component configuration in SAP Solution Manager (the Basis team can ensure this).

For the purposes of this article, I assume that your Change Management Work Center is already configured and running, and that your users have the necessary roles for this work center. The users must also have authorization for Quality Gate Management, which you can assign in the project administration authorization (transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN, Work Center: Implementation).  

Make sure that all the transport requests (workbench requests for ABAP or development requests, and customizing requests for functional or transaction SPRO requests) are created and released via Quality Gate Management in the Change Management Work Center — not in the satellite system. Otherwise, SAP Solution Manager does not connect those requests in the work center.

Create a Project in Project Administration

Next, create an SAP Solution Manager implementation project. It carries all the necessary information for Quality Gate Management — such as logical components, the start and end dates of the project, team members and their roles, the quality manager information, and the quality advisory board information. As you probably know, you can create a project with transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN.

Configuration Steps for Quality Gate Management 

Enter transaction SPRO and click the enter icon or press Enter. Click the SAP Reference IMG button to navigate to the main screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1

SAP Reference IMG initial screen

The following are the roles in Quality Gate Management:

• Quality manager: The quality manager is responsible for approving or rejecting all the changes happening within the system landscape
• Quality advisory board: A member of the quality advisory board makes the second approval or rejection. Depending on your organization’s size and project scenario, the board can be a group of project team members or simply one individual (in some cases, the same user can act as both the quality manager and quality advisory board). The board is responsible for confirming the quality of the system landscape.

In the IMG, follow menu path SAP Solution Manager > Scenario-Specific Settings > Quality Gate Management > Activate Services. In the pop-up screen that appears, select Activate Service and double-click it (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Activate the service

The screen shown in Figure 3, which is an internet communication framework (ICF) report, appears. Enter SM_QUALITY_GATE as the technical name and click the execute icon. The screen shown in Figure 4 appears.

Figure 3

Enter a name

Figure 4

Activation result summary

All the required services were automatically activated when you clicked the execute icon. You should see green traffic light icons next to them. If any service is not activated (i.e., has a yellow or red light), Basis can check that service.

Next, click the back icon to return to the screen shown in Figure 2. Double-click Check Service to check and test the services you just activated. Enter SERVICE in the Hierarchy Type in the screen that appears, and then click the execute icon (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Maintain service screen

In the next screen, click the default_host node to review the services you activated. You can also see this list by entering transaction SICF. Check that all the services are shown in black text, which means they are activated (deactivated serves are grayed out). If you need to test the service (e.g., if there is a Basis- or system-related problem), right-click it to open a context menu (Figure 6). Click Test Service and the service opens in the browser after authentication. Once you have sorted out any problems (if you have them), you have performed all the initial activities needed for Quality Gate Management.

Figure 6

Transaction SICF contains all services

Interface and Use of Quality Gate Management

Once Quality Gate Management is configured and the users have the required authorizations, then it is ready for use. Enter transaction SOLMAN_WORKCENTER to begin. Select the Change Management tab shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7

Navigate to the Change Management Work Center

The Quality Gate Management-enabled projects and roles are shown, along with their current phases (Figure 8). As you can see, the phases include Not Started, Scope, Build, Test, Deploy, and All.

Figure 8

Quality gate management project statuses

You have already created an SAP Solution Manager implementation project. For my example, I created a project called QGM_DEMO. To ensure that the appropriate roles appear in the screen shown in Figure 8, you must maintain the entries shown in Table 1 in the Project Team Member tab in transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN per your project requirements.

Table 1

User requirements

Click the Projects link on the left side of the screen shown in Figure 8. Four Change Management Work Center views are available for your project, in which you can edit the quality gate data:

• Graphical View: This view graphically lists all the implementation projects and quality gates with their phases. The duration in terms of day, week, or month time frames is also shown. Figure 9 shows the week view for my sample project QGM_DEMO.

Figure 9

Graphical view

• List View: In this view, implementation projects are displayed in a simple list. In this view, you can access functions such as releasing transport requests, checking the TMS configuration, accessing quality gate data, or starting an import to systems in your landscape (e.g., Development). As shown in Figure 10, the list view has some subareas:
  • Project information
  • List of changes for a project in the Transport Requests for Project tab
  • List of transports for a change in the Transport Requests for Change tab

Figure 10

List view

The top third of the screen in Figure 10 shows the implementation project (QGM_DEMO in this case) with all the details, such as the quality manager, quality advisory board, and the next quality gate. A green icon under TMS indicates a correct TMS setup. The next third of the screen shows all the changes that are created, with relevant information (e.g., owner type and source system) corresponding to the system selected in the top section for project QGM_DEMO. The bottom third of this view shows the actual transport requests (both workbench and customizing) for the changes selected in the section above it. These exist in the satellite system landscape. They are the transport requests that are created through this interface (i.e., via SAP Solution Manager) directly into the satellite systems, and you can manage them here.

• Project Status: This view gives you a graphical project status overview that covers the entire system landscape and phases, highlighting the quality gates (Figure 11). This example shows my sample landscape with four systems (Development, Evaluation, Quality Assurance, and Production) as well as phases, milestones, dates, and the transport request flow from system to system.

Figure 11

The Project Status view

• Risks: This view is the most important view because it shows the various risks that can arise in the system landscape (Figure 12). These risks (e.g., a transport error or missing transport request) are determined automatically by the system. The quality manager can check this view to determine what the current risks (if any) are. He or she can check before each phase or phase completion and determine if the transports have run correctly into the next system, or whether corrective measures need to be taken for these risks.

Figure 12

Default risk view (with no risks in this example)

Two tables are shown in Figure 12. The table in the top half of the screen shows the system information for the system in which the risk occurred. The second table depicts the actual transport request that affects the concerned system. Examples of the types of risks that could be in this view include transport errors and missing customizing or workbench transport requests. With this information, quality managers can react to problematic situations appropriately and ensure the project runs with minimized risk. In addition, the manager can change the gate status to Partial Passed if there are risks and upload a document to inform the quality advisory board of this via quality gates.

To start the setup of the quality gates, click the Maintain Project button (Figure 13) in the List View tab.

Figure 13

List view in the Change Management Work Center

This starts a wizard in which you can maintain all the attributes per your project requirements. This wizard manages the Quality Gate Management data of a project in several steps:

• Specify quality gates, milestones, the quality manager, and the quality advisory board. If you already specified the quality manager and quality advisory board members in Project Administration, this is automatically filled in here.

• Check the transport landscape. The system automatically displays either a green icon (correct) or red icon (incorrect).

• Assign quality gates to system roles, such as Development and Quality. Note that gates cannot be assigned to the system roles in the wrong order (e.g., as Quality, Development, and then Production as opposed to the correct order of Development, Quality, and then Production).

• Confirm all other system data that was set up previously

Manage Quality Gates

Quality gates are key opening points for requests or the checkpoints where the status or result of a request is determined by the quality manager. At every stage of the project, before moving it further, the quality manager selects or sets the value of the gate. The quality manager can choose an Initial, Partially Passed, Passed, or Not Passed status for the quality gate. The quality advisory board works at a higher level and works with the quality manager to approve or not approve requests and changes. The project as a whole is divided into four phases (scope, build, test, and deploy) that are separated by quality gates. These gates allow the request to move to next phase of the project when it is opened by the quality manager. The project phases begin when the quality manager clicks the Open Q-Gate button (Figure 14).

Figure 14

Open the quality gate to start the changes

There are four status options from which the quality manager or quality advisory board can choose. These statuses set the value of a quality gate, and in every phase of a project, the quality manager sets a value for the quality gate by opening it. When Passed is chosen, the next phase of the project is started. Here are the status options from which the quality manager and quality advisory board can choose:

• Initial — No status is set for the project phase
• Partially passed — some minor points are still open in this phase, but they should not delay the project
• Passed — the project can go to the next phase or be approved by the quality manager or quality advisory board
• Not passed — the project cannot go to the next phase. This step is more like a rejection.

Until both the quality manager and quality advisory board member select Partially passed or Passed, the overall gate status is not passed. Quality managers usually first change the status from Initial to Passed (Figure 15). They can also upload documents to serve as input to the quality advisory board.

Figure 15

Quality gate window with gate status

The quality manager can upload a document with the Upload Document link shown in Figure 15. The pop-up dialog shown in Figure 16 appears. The document is uploaded from your local workstation, so the quality manager can browse to find it. Once this is done and the quality manager clicks the OK button, the uploaded document is now available and attached to the quality gate (Figure 17).

Figure 16

Upload a document

Figure 17

Quality gate window with document attached

Now, when the quality advisory board members log into the system and navigate to the Change Management Work Center, they can click the same Open Q-Gate button as the quality manager and review the uploaded document and change the option to Passed or open the gate.

Next is the Scope phase. In this phase, all the documentation must be done for the project scope (including the Business Blueprint, functional specifications, and technical document creation). Describing all this is beyond the scope of this article, but once this is complete, the quality manager and quality advisory board use the above process and open the gate to Pass. The next phase is the Build phase.

In the Build phase, change or transport requests can be created directly in the satellite system from the Change Management Work Center. When the development is complete, the buttons for Release Transport Requests and Start Import (Figure 14) are used to transport the changes to the Quality Assurance system. The quality manager changes the phase from Build to Test. The quality advisory board member also changes the status to this.

Further testing is done in the satellite Quality Assurance system by the individuals in the organization who are responsible for testing changes in the satellite systems before production. When all the changes are ready to be deployed, the quality manager and quality advisory board member change the status of the quality gate from Initial to Passed, and thus the project phase in SAP Solution Manager is changed from Test to Deploy.

It is important to know that only an entire project, with all necessary changes and corrections, can be imported into the Deploy phase. This ensures that all transport requests of a project are imported completely into the Production system and that the transport requests are in the correct sequence. This completes the cycle, and all the changes that were created during this implementation can be viewed in the List view of the Change Management Work Center to ensure everything is all set.

Prakhar Saxena

Prakhar Saxena is an SAP Solution Manager-certified consultant with more than six years of experience. He currently works with Capgemini India Pvt Ltd as an SAP Solution Manager SME and is involved with SAP Solution Manager Implementations and upgrades across the world for various clients. He has worked extensively with Project Management, Test Management, Solution Documentation Assistant, Service Desk, and Change Request Management. He has also built proof of concepts (POCs) and demos for various companies around the world.

You may contact the author at prakhar_alld@yahoo.co.in.

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