Agile is nothing more than breaking up your big releases and making them into short cycles. A cycle, aka a sprint, is essentially a mini implementation project that focuses on your new incremental functionality, and will be your next go-live release.

There are technical considerations to focus on with Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Within SAP, a functioning application has been hand delivered to us from SAP itself. What we’re doing is we’re taking that functioning application, understanding the requirements, and then doing a fit/gap analysis. Then we’re taking that and going into the next set of exercises around process design, configuration, and master data definition. Even though SAP delivers the application, it has to be configured to meet the requirements of your business. We’re happy to help you figure out how Agile can play a key role in your processes.

So, where does testing fit in? Testing, which is actually a really significant part of the total project, is affected with Agile. Many organizations state that large percentage of their project is testing. In the end, there’s a significant foundation that has to be laid to deliver the minimal unit of functionality needed to provide business value. One key point of Agile that SAP has adopted is that of the business getting hands-on with the application earlier in the process.

With the pressure to deliver software both more quickly and safely, the adoption of unit test automation and continuous integration has become and is becoming more relevant.

The end result is improved software quality along with substantial cost savings. Typically, IT will spend 70-80% of their budget on the development and maintenance of existing systems and on keeping the lights on.  This dwarfs the initial development costs so the extra effort up-front to implement automated unit testing will still deliver significant benefits.

And it means that scarce IT resources can be allocated to work that can deliver more value.

Ask the CoreALM team how you can deliver more value to your team through Agile and Automated Testing!