Emergency Corrections in "To Be Tested"

[Former Member]

We have a Weekly Maintenance Cycle for normals and move urgents / emergency as needed during the week. It was our understanding that urgents would not be imported to prod until Testing and Change Manager approvals were recorded; however, SAP recently informed us that that our understanding was incorrect.

When a Developer passes to Test, the Transport is released, moved to QA, and added to the prod buffer. If the Correction Remains in u201CTo be Tested" when the Maintenance phase is Go-Live and SCMA is used to import Normals, the urgents / emergency Transports are also imported into prod even though they were not tested and don't have Change Manager approval. Per SAP, this is standard processing. For our organization, this is a SOX and audit concern. We are now manually removed these Transports from the buffer prior to importing Normals, then moving them back to the buffer after the Normals have been imported to production, but this is not acceptable long term as there is a risk of manually removing the incorrect transport.

Any information on how others deal with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Karen

[Former Member]

We implemented Configuration changes to resolve the issue where Emergency Transports were being moved to the Production buffer prior to Change Manager approval.

[DoloresCorrea]

Hi Karen,

This is working as indicated in point 15 of SDN blog

Change Request Management scenario: Usual questions and known errors

/people/dolores.correa/blog/2009/07/22/change-request-management-scenario-usual-questions-and-known-errors

15. Working with SDHFand SDMJ in the same task list --REALLY interesting case to know

Please test this behaviour in your test scenario to ensure you understand completely this behaviour.

Best regards,

Dolores

[Former Member]

Hi Dolores, Thanks for your response. We understand the process and I have previously read point 15 that you referenced. I was just trying to get an understanding of how other customers deal with this issue. If an emergency correction fails testing, the developer may not have the corrections completed to meet the Go-Live for normals. We have implemented ChaRM with HCM and there are payroll related changes that must be implemented on specific dates; therefore, we can't always delay the Go-Live of normals. What do other customers do when the emergency transport isn't ready, but the Go-Live must move the normals?

We are also hoping that SAP changes the process to prevent emergency ones from being moved to production prior to all approvals. Two suggestions that we have for SAP are 1) Modify the transport_all method of moving transports into production to check for ones that were previously not imported and not import them with the normals or 2) When the Developer selects 'Pass Correction To Test', we'd like a Transport Copy created similar to normals when a Developer selects 'Test Transport', but for the emergency correction, the status needs to change to 'To Be Tested'. When the Change Manager selects 'Released For Production', we'd like the Transport to be released, moved to QA, and added to the import buffer, similar to what it does today when the Developer selects 'Pass Correction To Test'. This would only move emergency ones to the prod buffer when all approvals are met and when the Go-Live is set, all transports in the buffer could be moved as it is today.