The Consultant's Blog May 2012
Now I bet you thought that once you had written your draft SAP functional spec and pushed it through the review and sign off process, that would be it. Right?
Wrong! Although a functional spec might be identified and approved in the Design phase, that is just the start of its very long and
fruitful life. As soon as it gets to Unit Testing, you can start to need some changes and tweaks. Perhaps during unit testing,
you notice one of the key features cannot be triggered in the way you had intended. Maybe your ABAP Developer has had to shorten
selection field names or column headings due to space constraints. Throughout the testing cycles, you are likely to have changes
(hopefully small) that need to be reflected in the functional spec.
Even after successful testing, your SAP functional spec is an important document. The Training team will refer to it (and probably you as the
author) to understand the design so that they can prepare their training materials appropriately.
When the end users finally get to test the report for themselves, they might decide that some key features have been missed, or perhaps
performance is an issue when it’s run with a lot of historical transactional data, requiring a change to the original design. All of these
changes will follow your project’s standard change control procedure but if they are approved, then the functional spec should be updated
accordingly to reflect what the end design will be.
It’s not over then, though! As author of the SAP functional spec, your immediate responsibilities may have finished with the signed off and tested
report. But to be thorough and professional, you want this report to Go Live successfully don’t you? I always include a ‘Deploy’ section in
my functional spec for how to take the report live.
- Do the folks involved in Go Live support need to set up any variants or background jobs?
- Is it reliant on specific master or transactional data to run successfully?
- Are there custom table entries to be maintained?
- Do the users running the report in Production need special authorisations?
Remember, throughout the life of your Functional Spec, it is going to be:
- The basis for technical design
- The basis for what needs to be unit tested and how
- Provide input into which relevant scenarios (business processes) should be included in Acceptance testing
- Provide input into which cross functional processes will be impacted for the scoping of Integration testing
- Act as the basis for end customer signoff – does it meet their original requirements?
- Provide the key information for Go Live preparation and Cutover activities, Training preparation, and Post Go Live Support
And lastly, your SAP functional spec should always reflect the latest design!
Current Blog
Please click on the appropriate link below to view past blogs or return to the current blog:
The Origin of the Functional Spec - April 2012
Get an Inside Track to consulting - June 2012
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