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Former Member

Overview of ALM Roles and Responsibilities

The Application Lifecycle Management implementation means major changes to the way how you manage the IT infrastructure. As this process touches many business and IT areas in the enterprise, this change requires a strong management support.

The ALM Sponsor provides the budget for the ALM implementation. The ALM Sponsor is

  • ordering the ALM project or at least an ALM prototype
  • approves the necessary budget (days + project resources)
  • should be invited to the Steering Board for the ALM Service and/or related project planning.

The ALM Owner/Responsible is able to decide critical questions across the ALM functional areas and internal organizations. He represents ALM topics in the internal organization. The ALM owner:

  • is responsible for the ALM project
  • is asked by the ALM Sponsor to manage the ALM project and to own the ALM at the customer
  • can sign-off the ALM scope
  • can sign-off the implemented (or blueprinted) ALM scenarios (or can at least moderate the decision making process inside the organization)
  • will sell the success of the ALM RDS Service or the ALM Pilot within organization to get the buy-in of all relevant parties
  • is part of the Steering Board.

The ALM Implementation Project Lead is responsible for the successful implementation of the ALM Processes Solution Documentation, Test Management, IT Service Management or Change Request management. The ALM Implementation Project Lead:

  • is responsible for the global and/or local ALM implementation
  • coordinates the ALM implementation project team
  • is responsible for the definition of ALM project / solution
  • is responsible for the definition of ALM system landscape
  • is reporting to the Steering Board.

The Infrastructure Owner:

  • is responsible for the system operations, e.g. availability and performance
  • coordinates all ALM design activities for SAP Solution Manager
  • is owner of the SAP Solution Manager system.

The ALM Operations Process Owner collaborates with the other ALM Operations Process Owners, realizes the vision and direction for the utilization of SAP Solution Manager and related ALM tools in the enterprise. He or she manages the functional and technical aspects in alignment with business and IT requirements. The ALM Operations Process Owners:

  • have an overview regarding the used ALM tools related to their specific ALM process
  • standardize and harmonize the ALM functionality in the company support IT projects in ALM architecture and design
  • are responsible to define their specific ALM process flow(s)
  • identify gaps and improvements in collaboration with end and key users in business and IT
  • manage the ALM experts of the respective ALM process.

ALM Process Owners – Examples

Examples for ALM Operations Process Owners and the ALM processes under their responsibility:

The Solution Documentation Process Owner owns processes like:

  • Business Process Documentation (inclusive Reverse Business Process Documentation)
  • Document Management
  • Template Management.

The Test Management Process Owner owns processes like:

  • Functional/Developer
  • Test Integration
  • Test Regression
  • Test (incl. Change Impact Analysis, Automated Testing)
  • Load Test.

The Change Control Management Process Owner, owns processes like:

  • Requirements Management
  • Maintenance Management (inclusive management of Urgent and Normal Changes)
  • Release Management
  • Project Management.

The IT Service Management Process Owner (IT SM) owns processes like:

  • Incident Management
  • Problem Management
  • Service Request Management.

The ALM Experts or Key User are team members of a project or IT department. They support projects as full or shared resources. They:

  • are experts of the specific SAP Solution Manager functionalities, e.g. change request management, test automation, business process modeling, etc.
  • are aware of the global standards defined by the ALM Operations Process Owners
  • collaborate with the business process owners/experts
  • do the SAP Solution Manager maintenance or the knowledge transfer assuring that the SAP Solution Manager and integrated tools processes are executed in a standardized way
  • attend and/or organize q-gates.

Please read about Solution Documentation specific roles in the contnuation blog:

ALM Management Roles in your Organization - Solution Documentation (2)