twan.vandenbroek

The magic of scrum

Twan van den Broek — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:22:07 GMT

The magic of scrum

Everyone is interested in the golden key to enforce successful projects. Nobody wants to be disappointed with the results after a few months, or even years, hard work. Time to apply some magic to SAP projects? Is that possible? Is scrum the magic word, is it a silver bullet?Why is scrum getting more popular in the SAP world? What do people want to achieve while looking at agile methodologies? According to the 2010 Version One investigation, it is about (amongst others):

Accelerate time to market
Enhance ability to manage changing priorities
Improve alignment between IT and business

At talks about applying scrum to the SAP world I often hear the following expectations:

Bring in the business!
Enable team spirit
Bring fun to team
It brings opportunities to business
Show software deliveries frequently to all stakeholders
Expectation management, what do I really need
Facilitate delivery process with continuous improvement
Happy users that are satisfied using the software

So scrum is magic?

Let me be clear before we start, this blog is not about the religious discussion between waterfall or agile project methodologies. There is already a lot written down on doing scrum, you can even learn about it within 5 minutes. And even here on SDN you can already find interesting blogs on doing scrum in the SAP world.

So then, why this blog? This blog is to identify some differences when you want to apply scrum to your SAP project. Differences, tweaking scrum? Isn’t that dangerous, will it still be scrum? To my belief one of the key principles of doing scrum is being pragmatic, so yes, you are allowed to tweak the process to fit your needs. But be aware don’t touch the core principles. Just as Bjoern Goerke wrote down in his blog Good Riddance "Do Scrum by the books. Always".

So my dear 'scrumdamentalists' don't get angry with me. Hold your breath before you state that scrum in the SAP world is not a real scrum. Things are a bit different but you are still able to do scrum in the SAP world. At least that is my opinion after having experience with 5 different kind of SAP projects:

SOA project with SAP ECC, CRM, PI, BI and non SAP
SAP PI implementation
SAP CRM implementation
SAP ECC implementation and European roll out
SAP CRM upgrade

Why are things different in the SAP implementation world?

Well

SAP doesn't come as a greenfield. SAP provides a lot of standard functionality and predefined industry solutions.
Project teams are formed with specialists instead of multidisciplinary teams. An ECC consultant will not do PI. An ABAP developer will not start customizing Finance. And so on.
Quite often multiple product owners are required for your project, different business aspects, different business department, different business representatives - so different product owners.
A project with multiple teams running in parallel requires special attention for integration (just like in non scrum SAP projects). It is even possible to have an integration test team next to your realization teams. (And yes, of course things are being tested within the realization teams, how else would things get done ;-)

Start with a vanilla SAP and identify the gaps that still need to be resolved (Check the agile addon for SAP's ASAP methodology in Jan Musil's blog ASAP goes Agile). Also don't write user stories for all SAP transactions that come out of the box.
Make sure that you have all required specialists on board. A rare specialist, required for a short period of time, needs some planning upfront.
Ensure that all product owners remain aligned. Facilitate in a 'scrum of scrums' meeting with all your product owners.
The scrum of scrums meeting is REALLY important, discuss each teams progress, make sure that integration issues are resolved and planned within the different teams. If you have an integration test team running in parallel, it will probably be out of phase with the realization teams. Take the integration issues resolution into account while preparing your sprint backlog.

Scrum in name only

Nowadays scrum is being 'hyped' within the SAP world, let's be careful together. Stick to the core principles of scrum.

If you're asked to join a scrum project with sprints of 3 months, you know that it is a scrum project "in name only".
When all your sprints are planned ahead by a project manager, this is not scrum, it is a ScrumBut.

Stick to the book, but keep in mind that some things are different in our SAP world.

Scrum is not magic nor a silver bullet, but it does give you a continuous insight in progress and issues. Insight that is given to you on a day-to-day basis and often a lot sooner than before.

When you apply scrum the right way, you will experience a project team that delivers frequently, continuously improves the way of working, takes responsibility to deliver what is actually needed and has fun in doing so.

If you are interested, you can see some real life feedback in my SAP TechEd 2011 slides.

Scrum and SAP, magic? Only at Hogwarts?

View more presentations from Twan van den Broek

The gamification of Demo Jam

Twan van den Broek — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:38:43 GMT

Some Demo Jam thoughts

The Demo Jam is a very powerful event at SAP TechEd to show latest innovations by customers, partners and SAP. No sales pitch allowed. No powerpoints or prezis. Just your demo and a timer set at 6 minutes. I even remember some teams doing live coding on stage.

The last few years a lot is said on the Demo Jam event. It has become a marketing event for SAP, the rules of the game have been changed, it's only SAP on stage, ... Maybe you can recall the lively twitter stream during and after last year's Demo Jam. Thorsten Franz already wrote a great blog on the On Genuine Demo Jam Awesomeness and he refers to another great blog by Michael Koch, What Is Wrong With SAP TechEd Demo Jam 2009.

Please allow me to share some thoughts on the Demo Jam as well.

What makes Demo Jam so great?

Live shows on stage by fellow SAP NetWeaver enthusiasts, some very serious and others hilarious
Customers, Partners and SAP employees willing to offer spare (own) time to work on their proposal. No strings attached, just to show their peers what they came up with.
An enthusiastic host who energizes the crowd
Timing of the event: at the end of the first day a plenary session to allow everyone to join
Location of the event: keynote hall to host a huge crowd
Live broadcast on the internet
It's the ultimate goal for an SAP NetWeaver professional to participate in Demo Jam just once in your life ;-)

What makes SAP losing its Demo Jam power

Last year 5 out of 6 teams were SAP teams. I'm not saying SAP employees are not allowed to participate. But the balance just doesn't feel right. Were customers and partners not able to enter a good suggestion? I just can't believe that.
And then, when you have entered a proposal but unfortunately got rejected - you only get an email stating the fact that you are not in. Thank you very much :( Why not adding a jury report to get the feeling that a team of professionals judged your idea.
Evaluate the rules of the game. Is it about showing the latest releases of SAP products, innovations that are almost productized or is to show what you can achieve with SAP NetWeaver technology. One golden rule is that powerpoints are not allowed, please also exclude commercial presentations, either from SAP (like the Business Objects hype from a few years ago) or partners.

The Gamification of Demo Jam

We're all talking a lot about the gamification of SAP, why not do the same with the Demo Jam. The Gamification of Demo Jam. Open up the event! Bring it back to the community!

A public jury - here on SDN - judges all the proposals. All community members are allowed to vote for one entry. The 6 proposals with the highest amount of votes make it to Demo Jam stage.
At SAP TechEd the stage is set and the contestants have their 6 minutes of fame to do their thing.

After demoing, a professional jury shares a short feedback on what they saw. This jury is formed by hot shots out of the SAP world, let's say Vishal Sikka, Björn Goerke, ... ;-) Rock stars on stage, just like with The Voice talent show.
When all demo's have been shown, the public jury comes in again. The crowd (onsite or online) cheers for their favorite team and the top 3 gets selected.
With a short recap the 3 finalists are presented again, what did they bring to the stage and what was the opinion of the professional jury.
Then the final battle: again the onsite and online crowd cheer for their favorite and the winner gets selected.

It is fun!

Don't get me wrong, I really look forward to the Demo Jam in the SAP TechEd agenda. But I hope to see more SDN community participants on stage. Let's not forget that participating is fun!

At least that's what we (André Stuij, Bas Bach and I) experienced while preparing ourselves for the 2010 entry. We didn't get selected for SAP TechEd, but fortunately we were able to do 'our show' at the VNSG (Dutch User Group Conference) in April 2011. We ended up second, right after a team that showed Momentum (now called Work Order Mobile) on the iPad. And yes we felt bad about that, losing from a commercial available product.

But let's stop whining about these results, please laugh along with me when I replay the BPM trains Demo Jam entry:

SAP communities ROCK!

Twan van den Broek — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:20:47 GMT

Why?

What could possibly motivate 70+ people to come together on a Saturday in Eindhoven (the Netherlands)?

Was it to:

Share passion with 70+ geeks and peers?
Exchange business cards from 30+ different companies?
Attend one of the 14 expert sessions?
Meet with one the 11 (!) SAP Mentors?
Shake hands with one the 5 DemoJam heroes?
Enjoy Mrs. Penninkhof’s dinner?

It was, of course, all of the above ;-) And it was a blast; the third SAP Inside Track in the Netherlands proved once again that the SAP community rocks!

Convinced?

Still not convinced? Two tweets sure worth mentioning:

@SAPCIO (view tweet)

Great #sitnlevent! Thanks to @CIBERnl @tbroek @jpenninkhof @fredverheul @steinermatt @wolf_gregor @Qmacro @JanLaros et al

@_bgoerke (view tweet)

RT “@steinermatt: @_bgoerke good to know you're listening and following us here at #sitnl" - well, it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it ;-)?

Recap

Welcome and opening

Twan van den Broek

Welcome prezi

SAP TechEd 10 years ago and now

Replay

Picture by Gregor Wolf

Overview of SAP NetWeaver Gateway

Fred Verheul

Slides

Replay

All about SAP Security EXCEPT authorizations

Joris van de Vis

Slides

Replay

DUET Enterprise showcase

Pim de Wit, William van Strien

Replay

REST-informed Development Approach with ADL

DJ Adams

Slides

Replay

Building applications using Mobile Hybrid Web Containers (HTML5/JS)

Roel van den Berge, Wim Snoep

Prezi

Replay

ABAP Package Concept, Use Cases & Best Practices

Tobias Trapp

Slides

Replay

(BI/BO) SAP TechEd Takeaway

Sven van Leuken, Peter Combee

Slides

Replay

Enterprise mobility

Jan Penninkhof

Replay

How will BPM save SAP PI?

Or is it the other way around ;-)

Twan van den Broek

Replay

Introduction to SAP Code Exchange

Demo of 4 sample Code Exchange projects (abap2xlsx, ZGEOCODE, SeleniumABAP and ZAKE/SAPlink)

Rui Nogueira, Gregor Wolf

Replay

A surprise session on a "soft topic"

Inspired by one of my recent blogs. If you have a whisky nosing glass, bring it.

Thorsten Franz

Replay

Integration Core. Resistance is futile

Martijn Linssen

Slides

Replay

SAP's OD platform with focus on Java

Matthias Steiner

Replay

NW Portal On-Device

Tamas Szirtes

Slides

Replay

DemoJam

Rui Nogueira

Replay

Wrap up

Twan van den Broek

Replay

More #sitNL fun at:

Gregor Wolf's photobook
Twan van den Broek's photobook
Rui Nogueira's Episode 007 podcast (recorded at the end of the evening starring Rui's highly energetic voice ;-)

Thank you all for making the third #sitNL such a great event!

Michael Hardenbol and Bernard Smits for operating the webcam
Members of the speakers club: Roel van den Berge, Wim Snoep, Tobias Trapp, Jan Penninkhof, Peter Combee, Sven van Leuken, Matthias Steiner, Rui Nogueira, Fred Verheul, DJ Adams, Martijn Linssen, Tamas Szirtes, Gregor Wolf, Pim de Wit, Thorsten Franz, Joris van de Vis, William van Strien
Our DemoJam heroes: Michael Spahn, Wolfgang Schwach, Leo van Hengel, Roel van den Berge, Louis van de Wiele, DJ Adams, Gregor Wolf
Friends from SAP Research joining us and demoing at DemoJam
Participants from UK, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands
Co organizers: Jan Penninkhof, Pim de Wit, Fred Verheul, Tamas Szirtes, Roel van den Berge
Moving tables and chairs: Jeroen Elie, Michael Hardenbol, Bernard Smits, Ravi Santani, Louis van de Wiele, Peter Combee
And last but not least (please a big hand for, the one and only) Mrs. Penninkhof!!! What an incredible chef we had.

And thank you

for sponsoring our community event!

Agenda SAP Inside Track NL 2011

Twan van den Broek — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:13:27 GMT

The 3rd SAP Inside Track NL

On November 26 another Inside Track is planned, location is Eindhoven, the Netherlands. We have 50+ participants, 25+ different companies, 14 highly valued knowledge sessions, 8 SAP Mentors, 5 DemoJam contesters, 4 countries, 1 Mrs Penninkhof cooking our dinner and ... you?

Agenda

	SAP TechEd track	SAP NetWeaver track
10:00	Welcome and opening Twan van den Broek
10:15	Overview of SAP NetWeaver Gateway Fred Verheul	All about SAP Security EXCEPT authorizations Joris van de Vis
11:00	DUET Enterprise showcase Pim de Wit, William van Strien	REST-informed Development Approach with ADL A look at an Alternative Dispatcher Layer (ADL) on top of the ICF that allows you to plan, organise and develop HTTP services in a resource-orientated way, using a similar approach to other web frameworks DJ Adams
11:45	Enterprise mobility Building applications using Mobile Hybrid Web Containers (HTML5/JS) Roel van den Berge, Wim Snoep	ABAP Package Concept Use Cases & Best Practices Tobias Trapp
12:30	Lunch break
13:30	(BI/BO) SAP TechEd Takeaway Sven van Leuken, Peter Combee	Enterprise mobility The good old SAP NetWeaver Java box has a couple of very interesting tools for modeling and building mobile applications. Combine it with jQuery Mobile or Flex to build state-of-the-art mobile apps. Jan Penninkhof
14:15	How will BPM save SAP PI? Or is it the other way around ;-) Twan van den Broek	Introduction to SAP Code Exchange and demo of 4 sample Code Exchange projects (abap2xlsx, ZGEOCODE, SeleniumABAP and ZAKE/SAPlink) Rui Nogueira, Gregor Wolf
15:00	Coffee break
15:30	Experiences made with and use cases for SAP River Thorsten Franz	NW Portal On-Device Discuss the role of the NW portal in the brave new mobile world (running portal on mobile, how to mix SUP and portal, etc.) Tamas Szirtes
16:15	SAP's OD platform with focus on Java Matthias Steiner (+ special guest(s) to be disclosed)	Integration Core Resistance is futile Martijn Linssen
17:00	DemoJam Rui Nogueira
18:00	Wrap up Twan van den Broek
18:30	Evening event

DemoJam

Geeky stuff	Geek(s)
Small demo of RAD on SAP's OD platform	Michael Spahn (+ Wolfgang Schwach)
Under construction (NW7.3)	Leo van Hengel
mTime, mobile time writing	Roel van den Berge, Louis van de Wiele
Google Apps As Enterprise Data Desktop - Info Where You Want It	DJ Adams
SeleniumABAP	Gregor Wolf

Some details

Of course all participants will cover the event live on Twitter with #sitNL
We will do a live broadcast (and this year we will record the sessions ;-)
More details on our wiki page

Event partners

SAP Inside Track NL 2011 is proudly brought to you by:

The 2011 organizing committee

Jan Penninkhof
Roel van den Berge
Fred Verheul
Pim de Wit
Tamas Szirtes
Twan van den Broek

SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2011, The SAP TechEd XPerience

Twan van den Broek — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:56:14 GMT

SAP Inside Track 2011 – The Netherlands

On November 26th SAP TechEd enthusiastic people will gather for the third time at the SAP Inside Track NL. A community event where the borderless enterprise comes to live. We all share the same passion for our profession and we all like to share our thoughts and ideas. By doing so you will not only ‘teach’ other participants, you will learn yourself as well. Sharing knowledge means growing as a community.

Organization committee is formed by (alphabetical order): Fred Verheul (NL4B), Jan Penninkhof (Phoqus and SAP Mentor), Pim de Wit (The Next View), Roel van den Berge (CIBER), Tamas Szirtes (Intenzz) and Twan van den Broek (CIBER and SAP Mentor).

SAP TechEd XPerience

Theme is the SAP TechEd feedback. What have we heard, learned and experienced. On Saturday our speakers will share that with you. And please do start the discussion – that is the most valuable time during the event.

So when you will visit the SAP TechEd this year and you are one of the above mentioned enthusiastic community members, please enter your session proposal for this year’s SAP Inside Track NL (sitNL in short and #sitNL on Twitter ;-).

New to the agenda is that we would like to offer the possibility to discuss demo’s, prototypes you are working on, pair developing on tough issues, ... (fill in your own wishes): more interaction than presentation.

DemoJam

A DemoJam will conclude the event. One hour with short presentations (max 6 minutes of course) on your own innovations. Take the change and take the stage. No worries about a tough selection committee – every idea is welcome. All participants will vote and by that select the winner.

This final of the SAP Inside Track will for sure be an energizing one.

Who/Where/When

The SAP Inside Track is a community event for all community members, both consultants and customers. We started with Dutch folks only in 2009. In 2010 we also had SAP stars from Germany in tha house. Of course we hope to see you all again, bringing in new friends in 2011.

Location is not yet confirmed (please pay attention to changes on our wiki page), but will be around Eindhoven or Den Bosch.

As said we will gather at November 26th at 10:00. We aim to finish at 18:00 and for those interested there will be a dinner in the evening.

Registration

Please go to the sitNL wiki page and enter your name and your session/DemoJam proposal.

Recap blogs

Here's something to freshen up your memory or to find out more on our previous events.

Hope to see you at the sitNL!

Recap SAP Inside Track NL 2010

Twan van den Broek — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:40:37 GMT

SAP Inside Track NL - Community rules!

On Saturday November 20th more than 50 SAP TechEd enthusiasts gathered in Eindhoven (Netherlands) to participate in the second Agenda SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2010, The SAP TechEd XPerience. In this blog a small recap of the event.

10, 9, 8, 7, ...

Pim and Twan counting down to the start.

Our family picture ;-) Unfortunately taken a little too late in the evening as most of the participants already left home.

We started the day explaining the power of communities, the SAP Inside Track events are a living example of that statement. To explain in detail a small movie was used, in the movie someone has a good idea worth spreading. In a few minutes time, you can see that the idea has been adopted by the community and everyone jumps in.

Some results

The results of our online survey are listed below. Scale used varies from 1 (Very good) to 5 (Needs improvement).

Building force.com application integrated with SAP via PI Wim van Erp (The Next View) and Paul van Os (Oxolution)	2,29
Updates and new features in SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.3 Tamas Szirtes (Intenzz)	2,00
Introduction to BOL Programming. Not only for CRM developers Roel van den Berge (CIBER)	1,82
SAP Figures @ your FingerTips always, everywhere, real time powered by BO & Roambi Pieter Verstraeten (TopForce) and Norbert Maijoor (TopForce)	2,27
Enticing Flex UIs: the mainland approach Jan Pennikhof (Phoqus)	1,33
SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2: Lessons from the first live implementation Wout de Jong (Creetion)	2,33
A look at Web Client UI Framework and BOL from an architect's point of view Thorsten Franz (AOK Systems)	1,63
New SAP BI 4.0 features (frontend and backend) Jaap van de Mheen (CIBER)	2,25
Talking about the Code Exchange platform and addressing questions around the topic Rui Nogueira (SAP)	1,70
SAP PI brings the final divorce between ABAP and Java Paul van Os (Oxolution)	1,94
SAP Unwired Platform - where mobility meets the enterprise Martijn de Jong (ChiliApps)	2,25
Agenda	1,56
DemoJam	1,64
Location	1,82
Catering	1,68
Communication	1,86
Fun	1,45
Chat/discuss possibilities	1,59

Some highlights


The best rated session by Jan. More of Jan's work at: Flex development on the Netweaver CE stack - Part 1: The Perfect Setup Flex development on the Netweaver CE stack - Part 2: Calling the R/3 back-end	Second best rated. Thorsten pulled a 'Kaj van de Loo' at sitNL.

Roel on BOL programming. You can find his slides on slideshare.	Norbert and Pieter show off all their cool devices. Their slides can be found on slideshare.

Look who's paying real attention :) @cbasis and @hanssenden	Paul preparing his session with Martijn uploading his slides to Paul's pc. You can find Paul's slides on PI at slideshare.

A short break, time to get a coke and some chips.

Some DemoJam pics

The one and only real DemoJam host: Craig. This time holding an iPad in stead of a beer.

Yeah, 6 minutes only to do your trick.

Our participants and finalists: Leo, Xavier and Jan.

Jan won the show.

Some lessons learned

Live broadcasting needs operators who keep an eye on the webcam and the online audience. Questions posted here should be redirected to the speaker. The sessions need to be recorded to be available after the event, an option we have forgotten :(
The atmosphere is important, make sure there is plenty of room to chat / discuss.
WiFi is not a nice to have, it is a requirement. Make sure there is enough bandwidth, especially for the presenters.
DemoJam is to be included on every SAP Inside Track.
Twitterwall was missing.
We forgot to tape personal video statements from the participants.
How to switch off the alarm without the cops having to check on me ;-)

Some links

Impression of SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2010 on SDN
Flickr sitNL set

Some sponsors (thanks)

Some statements

"No slides. Just Thorsten. Fantastic!"
"Catering: Exceptional for Dutch standards."
"Always nice to see my best-SAP-friends-forever."
"It was a great event where I have met my online friends in real life ;-)"

Agenda SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2010, The SAP TechEd XPerience

Twan van den Broek — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:10:07 GMT

Learn by sharing knowledge!

A community event where 40+ people from 15+ different companies come together and share knowledge and experience.

Agenda

On November 20th we offer you the following agenda for SAP Inside Track NL (#sitNL).

Time	Development track	Product updates track
10:00	Opening Twan van den Broek (CIBER), Pim de Wit (The Next View)
10:30	Building force.com application integrated with SAP via PI Wim van Erp (The Next View) and Paul van Os (Oxolution)	Updates and new features in SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.3 Tamas Szirtes (Intenzz)
11:30	Introduction to BOL Programming. Not only for CRM developers... Roel van den Berge (CIBER)	SAP Figures @ your FingerTips always, everywhere, real time powered by BO & Roambi Pieter Verstraeten (TopForce) and Norbert Maijoor (TopForce)
12:30	Lunch break
13:30	Enticing Flex UIs: the mainland approach Jan Pennikhof (Phoqus)	SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2: Lessons from the first live implementation Wout de Jong (Creetion) / Jeroen van Lier (Creetion)
14:30	A look at Web Client UI Framework and BOL from an architect's point of view Thorsten Franz (AOK Systems)	New SAP BI 4.0 features (frontend and backend) Jaap van de Mheen (CIBER)
15:30	Coffee/tea break
16:00	Talking about the Code Exchange platform and addressing questions around the topic Rui Nogueira (SAP)	SAP PI brings the final divorce between ABAP and Java Paul van Os (Oxolution) SAP Unwired Platform - where mobility meets the enterprise Martijn de Jong (ChiliApps)
17:00	Innovation hour Craig Cmehil (SAP)
18:00	Wrap up of the day Twan van den Broek (CIBER), Pim de Wit (The Next View)
19:00	Evening event

Innovation hour / DemoJam

Description	Host
SAP Twitterized	Roel van den Berge (CIBER)
iGoogle Gadget (featuring UWL,BPM,JSON & OAuth)	Leo van Hengel (CIBER)
Twitter DIY with Xcelsius	Xavier Hacking (Interdobs)

Event coverage

Of course we will bring you live event coverage on Twitter with #sitNL.

More detailed info and registration form on our wiki page.

We'll try to broadcast the event live over internet:

Main room, development track https://sap.na.pgiconnect.com/sitnl
Room 2, product updates https://sap.na.pgiconnect.com/sitnl2

Event partners

SAP Inside Track NL 2010 is proudly brought to you by:

Spreading the agile word in the SAP world

Twan van den Broek — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:46:03 GMT

When I first started to think on how to apply agile to the SAP world, I started here at SDN (of course ;-) For the first time I got disappointed by SDN ... There wasn’t much to find on agile nor scrum on SDN. I found 2 blogs, both a bit theoretical.

So I read a bit about the theory, read a bit that SAP was implementing scrum, but I couldn’t find HOW to implement scrum in an SAP project. And that was exactly what I was searching for. We were about to start doing scrum in our SOA SAP project (#cross2010 on Twitter). I decided to share our experiences, on SDN of course ;-)

SAP Scrum: An agile approach to deliver what is really required

1,5 year later, we successfully delivered 3 projects and we just started the 4th one. Want to know how we did this? How we implemented scrum as project approach in an SOA SAP project? Please join me in session PMC236 at SAP TechEd Berlin on Wednesday October 13th, 12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m., L6, Hall 4.

Daily scrum meeting, stand up (except for one ;-)

Joined design, team effort.

Don’t expect a silver bullet for agile, there is none. I will share our experiences and give you some tips on how to start applying agile to your own SAP project.

More agile at this year’s SAP TechEd:
PMC105, SAP's Agile Methodology for Implementing your BPM Project by Ann Rosenberg

And for you hungry readers there is a lot more to find on agile and SAP on SDN nowadays.

Recommended:

How Lean, Agile and Scrum will shape your company of the future by Dagfinn Parnas
SCRUM as example for new approaches in application development by Marcel Salein
Agile Is A Journey by Michael Koch
Agility, Non-Agility and Religious Beliefs by Tobias Trapp
Is ASAP the best we can do now? by Vijay Vijayasankar
Lazy developers hate agile and scrum discussion at #sapphirenow by Dagfinn Parnas and me. Take some time to go through the comments.

And on Twitter. First only some rare tweets, now growing and growing with a lot of new job openings.

SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2010, The SAP TechEd XPerience

Twan van den Broek — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:39:52 GMT

Attending SAP TechEd in Berlin or Las Vegas and already built your personal agenda? Then you know what I mean with a busy schedule ;-) So many tracks and so many sessions and workshops to attend. And ... if you’re lucky some of these sessions are overlapping in time :-(

What to do? Attend SAP Inside Track Netherlands! With the SAP TechEd XPerience as theme, visitors from this year’s SAP TechEd will present their thoughts and visions on what they have learned. There you have your chance to learn from other professionals and to exchange knowledge, ideas and vision.

And of course, if you are not able to attend SAP TechEd, the SAP Inside Track Event is second best. Come and learn from your peers from the SDN/BPX/BO community.

It promises to be an even bigger success than last year, when Recap SAP Inside Track Eindhoven was organized for the first time. With the participation of consulting parties as The Next View, Creetion, Intenzz, TopForce, NL4B, CIBER and freelance professionals SAP Inside Track Netherlands will offer a program that you do not want to miss!

This year we have planned an exciting event to finish our day: An open stage for innovations on top of SAP NetWeaver, “Innovation hour”. Take max 8 minutes and show us what you’ve got. You probably noticed the resemblance with SAP’s DemoJam ;-) That’s why we have asked Craig Cmehil to host the innovation hour. Didn’t get through the selections for this year’s DemoJam, take the stage and participate in our own SAP’s Idols.

Registration is easy, go to our wiki page for more details and enter the registration form.

Agenda SAP Inside Track Netherlands 2010, The SAP TechEd XPerience posted in seperate SDN blog.

Looking forward to meet you at SAP Inside Track Netherlands, November 20th.

Event attendance with SAP NetWeaver BPM, part 1

Twan van den Broek — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:10:59 GMT

BPM blog series

This blog is part 1 of a 2-part series on SAP NetWeaver BPM. With the implementation of the event attendance process I encountered several issues (see SAP NetWeaver BPM for BPX, great but not there yet). Via these two blogs I want to share my experiences.

Part 1 explains the actual process and modeling it in SAP NetWeaver BPM
Part 2 describes all the steps necessary to run the process after you modeled it

In this blog I am not covering all the detailed steps to model the process. There are already lots of interesting blogs/tutorials that do so. I just want to highlight the advantages we now have as BPX to model your own process.

Process requirements

Multiple roles should be involved: Visitor to the booth, Consultant helping the visitor, Manager to assign a contact person
Process had to be started via a Visual Composer application
Real SAP back end scenario had to be in place
SAP BAPI had to be included
Non SAP web service had to be included

With these requirements the power of the new SAP NetWeaver CE7.2 modeling environment can be shown.

Running the process

Process is started by entering the form. With submit the visitor details are transferred to the process.

The next step is for the consultant to open the universal worklist and to continue with the process. He enters the visitors area of interest and identifies whether the visitor is interested in additional information or personal contact.

Then the manager assigns a contact person to the visitors that are interested.

As a result the visitor is created in SAP as an external person and the attendance to the event is booked in SAP Training and Event module.

Contact details were sent by SMS to the visitors who had indicated their interest. Visitors that weren't interested received a 'Thank you' SMS.

Modeling the process

The process is modeled within the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio (of course ;-) It is based on the BPM160 handson workshop from SAP TechEd 2009.

Importing a BAPI

If you want to use a BAPI in your process, you first have to identify your SAP backend system at the preferences for the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

In the project explorer, at service interfaces, it is possible to import an RFC enabled function module. In the trial this is called mysteriously '%action.label.0'.

Enter the name (or part of) of your BAPI and go.

The SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio imports the BAPI as a service and generates all necessary components for you.

Now you can use the imported BAPI in your process step.

And with drag and drop the in- and output mapping can be finalized. After which the BAPI is ready for use in your process.

Import a webservice

The service that sends an SMS to the visitor is available in the service registry (how to do so will be described in part 2). The import of this service is handled via the import of a WSDL, provided by the service registry.

Select the appropriate service.

Assign a service group to the webservice. Why? That will be described in part 2.

Now the service is available for the applicable process step.

And again perform the in- and output mapping. Assign data from the process context to the input parameters to fulfill the data needs. In this example two fields are defaulted with a fixed value.

Trigger via Visual Composer application

The process can be triggered by the 'RegisterAttendance' trigger, stated at the start event.

The form that can be entered by the visitor and actually triggers the process, is created in Visual Composer. At Search you can browse for services that are available in the service repository. Which will be the case for your process after you have deployed it.
Follow the wizard to find and select the service to start your process.

Drag the service to the working space and add a form to it.

And with the designing capabilities of the Visual Composer you can model the UI according to your wishes.

Issues encountered

Modeling the process is really easy. With wizards you are guided through the steps that might look a bit complicated (import a webservice for example).
It is quite obvious that in a service oriented process you are dependent on the available services, both SAP and non SAP. As Training and Event Management is part of HR, it is quite hard to find the proper BAPI to create an external person or to book attendance to an event. I ended up building up my own BAPI's on base of existing function modules with custom code as glue.
Adding fields to the process context is not BPX/developer friendly. Extending the data objects is no problem. However using these newly added fields in existing process steps is a no-go. You actually have to re-create this process step and to generate the UI all over again. I can guarantee you that you will not appreciate this.
In my first version of the process I used the SMS service twice in the process, once for the non-interested visitor and once for the interested visitor. Although you will have no errors - this will not work. Frustrating, and when I almost gave up, I modeled the SMS service only once in the process and used two different mapping steps to get the same result. That was the magical solution.

The real difficulty was to get the process started via a webservice and running. The model was fine, no errors were shown, the process was deployed successfully, but still ... no running process. To resolve that, please read on in my next blog.

SAP NetWeaver BPM for BPX, great but not there yet

Twan van den Broek — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:42:38 GMT

Skeptical?

Wow that looks like a skeptical title for a blog doesn’t it? Well people who know me or have read my blogs here on SDN, they know that I am very enthusiastic on the concept of SAP NetWeaver BPM:

Process modeling in the BPMN language
Import web services
Melt both SAP and non SAP services into one end-user process
Auto generation of user interfaces (Web Dynpro Java and Visual Composer, as of CE7.2)
Intermediate events (as of CE7.2)
Business to model and Model to execute come together in one tool: SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio

Why? With modeling in BPM both the suits and geeks are facilitated to speak the same language. That will help in setting up the right path to final delivery. SOA projects come to live with BPM. Finally you can explain the SOA business case to your business representatives. It will also help in prototyping the solution to your end-users/customers. Within a very short time you can actually make your model come to live with the generated user interface and re-using existing (web) services.

Setting up the process

Are there any downsides? Well I have to admit there are a few ;-) Past weeks I was busy setting up a customer demo with SAP NetWeaver BPM. Process requirements were:
-    Modeling with BPM
-    Process to be started via web service
-    Process contains both external web services as SAP services
-    Different roles (Requester, Approver)

I reused the BPM160 SAP TechEd process:

(Process is almost the same as in BPM160. I my next blog I will show the process that I actually wanted to implement, but first I want that one to come to live.)

During design time everything works great. Generating the UI is a great feature that has been added to CE7.2. Standard work is automated; you can focus on fine tuning the UI to your needs.
Also importing web services via a WSDL file or SAP services via a BAPI works very easily:

The SAP backend system is defined in the preferences of the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, and you can search for the BAPI you want to re-use in your process. The service interface and all other required stuff is then generated for you. This again saves a lot of time.
Input mapping is facilitated by showing all the BAPI input parameters. Draw the lines from the process context and you’re done.

For those of you who ever worked with Guided Procedures – I can’t say this enough: This is sooo much better ;-)

Validate your process, build and deploy.

The fun begins

And now the real fun begins. In order to make your process run as designed there are some steps to execute in the SAP Portal. And that is what my title is referring to. We need a portal settings made easy guide for us BPX’s who want to use SAP NetWeaver BPM.
I can be very short about this: it is a maze and I haven’t found the exit yet.

Web services have to be included on the whitelist (Do NOT enter them with http:// in front of them. It will not throw an error, but your process step will not work.
Provider systems
Destination templates
Application communication settings
Destination localhost that could not be found, although running smoothly
…

Well, sorry to admit but I got lost and it cost me a lot of hours (and sleep) to figure out what is wrong. The log viewer isn’t much of a help: Some statements of authentication errors, but hey I have added user id and password everywhere where I could. Debugging the process in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, which is a great feature by the way, isn’t much a help either. It only says “Process error”. Hey, I already had that figured out by myself ;-)

I ended up to forget about my original idea to show a process with both SAP and non-SAP services. The BPM160 process came back to the drawing board. That was an easy way out as this process doesn’t require any service calls. Again a disappointment: the SAP TechEd tutorial didn’t describe the
steps required to start the process via a web service that is called by a separate Visual Composer application.

To make a long story short: The demo went OK, people really were interested in the new features that SAP NetWeaver BPM offers. And with CE7.2, SAP made a very big step in the right direction. But in order to motivate BPX’s (target audience for BPM as far as I know) to start using BPM, there is still some work to do in the SAP Portal environment. Otherwise a great concept dies in its technology.
It is as if you have received a fantastic designed car. Great looks, great operational controls, great multipurpose use cases, but … unfortunately no wheels delivered in order to actually make it move forward.

I recommend everyone to download the CE7.2 trial and share your experiences here on SDN.

Even more easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver CE7.2

Twan van den Broek — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:18:33 GMT

Last year I wrote two blogs on process implementation with SAP NetWeaver CE7.1:
- Easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver BPM.
- Easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver BPM / the BRM sequel.

I was wondering how things have changed with SAP NetWeaver CE7.2. So I picked up the expense demo process again and reimplemented it in CE7.2. Here are the differences:

Integration of Visual Composer.

Now it is really easy to use the Visual Composer to generate your UI’s:

When the process is modeled, create a new task and select ‘Generate UI component’.

Select Visual Composer as UI technology.

Select the relevant process context, what goes in and what goes out.

And then … the magic happens … Visual Composer is starting up within the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

As a result: the generated UI.

Of course you can change this according to your needs:

Nice thing is that once you have deployed your total process and still want to change your UI, you only have to deploy the changed UI’s and not the complete process again.

Code free development.

Remember that in my 7.1 demo I still needed some Java code to assign the right value to the approval status. True in case of approval and False when rejected.
This is now possible without any line of Java code.

With an action I can assign value True to Target field Approved, which is the boolean in the process context.

And to show a real word to the end user in stead of the True or False values, you can use the dynamic expression editor.

Again a simple demo, but you can really feel the power of the Composition Environment growing with the 7.2 release.

Oh and on the process visualization screen you can now see what steps have been followed in the process with the grey diamond marks.

(This doesn’t work yet with FireFox)

Next is to explore the reporting possibilities, ERP integration, intermediate events and to start the process with a web service call.

Recap SAP Inside Track Eindhoven

Twan van den Broek — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:47:44 GMT

Saturday December 12th was the day the first SAP Inside Track Eindhoven: The TechEd XPerience in the Netherlands took off. 30 People gathered in Eindhoven to listen to and discuss with Program SAP Inside Track Eindhoven. How about that? Thirty enthusiastic SAP consultants from 10 different companies join together to share thoughts and ideas on the SAP TechEd: The SAP TechEd XPerience.
The borderless enterprise comes to live when the SCN community works together on an event like SAP Inside Track.

To make sure we could make it through the day, we started with a lunch at 12:00.

Robert Verlaat (Avelon) started with a BPM presentation, “What’s new in SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2”. In his presentation new features as intermediate events, report steps were pointed out. Also a CE7.1 demo was shown which integrated regular SAP Workflow with BPM and a web service.

Ingrid Bos (Ingrid Bos Consultancy) hosted the first parallel session, “What’s new in ABAP”. Ingrid pointed out her key lessons learned from the sessions she joined at SAP TechEd.

Paul van Os (Oxolution) brought 70 slides to explain about the great new features in SAP PI. Paul first asked who was already experienced in PI, those who answered yes were not allowed to ask questions ;-)
PI7.2 brings great performance features with queue handling and tuning. Process monitoring according to SAP takes place in the Solution Manager. We didn’t quite agree on that one. A good monitoring tool with restart possibilities is still to be custom built.

Aleem Mohiuddin (Tata Consultancy Services) presented an overview on Web Dynpro for ABAP. FIRE was always about Form, Interfaces, Reports and Enhancements. Aleem talked a lot about fire, firing plugs to raise events. That shows that SAP NetWeaver development with Web Dynpro for ABAP is so much different from regular ABAP programming.

After a break, used to share thoughts and get to learn each others, we continued.

Norbert Maijoor (TopForce) explained where we stand with the BI / BO integration. No proper BI solution with a solid solution architecture.

Finally me, Twan van den Broek (CIBER) with a hands-on demo on SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2.
I almost had a no go with my demo. The CE7.2 environment which run so smoothly at home, had severe issues with the network available at the premise. It just didn’t want to start up. Finally with a VPN connection it came to live. Wise lesson: always test your local CE environment without your personal network connection. AND create movies from your demo’s otherwise you may end up with empty hands.
In the demo the integration between SAP NetWeaver BPM and Visual Composer (the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio version) was shown. Creating an application without a single line of code.
Next to that also the great new possibilities from the Enterprise Services workplace were shown. Find your service, see what example data can be used, test drive the service on an SAP system and download the .sca file to import it into your local Developer Studio. The download not only works for enterprise services, even complete processes can be downloaded and locally adjusted according to your needs.

We concluded this inspiring day with a dinner. I am happy to tell you that everyone had fun and was enthusiastic on the concept. So we are already making plans for 2010!
Relive the event with pictures on Flickr or via the Twitter search with #SAPInsideTrackEindhoven.

Thanks to CIBER for sponsoring the event with the location, lunch, dinner and some goodies.

Next? SAP Inside Track Bonn, February 20th 2010. Hosted by Tobias Trapp and Thorsten Franz.

Let me share a final tip within the SCN community: If there is a SAP Inside Track organized locally - JOIN! There you will learn a lot of fellow community members and for sure you will meet new friends.

Program SAP Inside Track Eindhoven

Twan van den Broek — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:25:53 GMT

SAP Inside Track Eindhoven: The SAP TechEd XPerience.

An event where you can learn by sharing.

I am proud to announce the inspiring program of the first SAP Inside Track in the Netherlands (December 12th 2009).

Time	Session A	Session B
12:00	Reception with lunch
13:00	What’s new in SAP NetWeaver BPM Robert Verlaat	What’s new in ABAP Ingrid Bos
14:00	Great new features in PI. How SAP enables SAML and which things still works as designed! Paul van Os	Web Dynpro for ABAP overview Aleem Mohiuddin
15:00	Break
15:30	SAP BW/BI -BO integration....... Where do we stand? Norbert Maijoor	Web Dynpro for Java overview Jan Penninkhof
16:30	Hacking, playing or modeling with CE7.2 Twan van den Broek
17:00	Closure
17:30	Dinner and creation of evil plans

The power of SAP Inside Track, besides the great speakers, is to bring community members together to discuss new possibilities with SAP products.

Register for the event by using the Google Form.

Live event coverage with Twitter tag #SAPInsideTrackEindhoven.

Link to wiki.

SAP TechEd 2009 Vienna Recap

Twan van den Broek — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:20:57 GMT

SAP TechEd 2009 Europe: Maximize your impact.

A recap from my perspective.

Tuesday

Keynote

SAP is recognizing the power of communities, working on collaborative innovations beyond company borders. At least during the keynote at SAP TechEd. Let’s see how this comes in practice. Is a company as SAP really interested in working together with other consultancy firms or are they just referring to ‘end-customers’?

The biggest part of the keynote was about: Business Objects - Business Objects and Business Objects. Marge stated that only 1 employee out of 5 has enough information to do his/her job. One out of five, that makes you think! No wonder that a lot of attention is pointed at the information business area.
I personally think that SAP did a good investment to incorporate BOBJ in its suite. Insight in data and processes is key in being successful doing your business. Deliver the right info (Business Objects) at the right time (BPM) whenever you need it (Portals and Mobility).
However please note that the SAP TechEd audience is not only BOBJ oriented, there are a lot of developers, portal specialists, integration consultants, BPX, … that were able to make the business case to visit SAP TechEd. It would have been very polite to have paid attention to their focus areas as well.

The demo by Ian was a demo as expected on stage at SAP TechEd. You have to watch the replay [starting at 1:33:30]. It was about using mobile, web and SAP technology to really support you in doing your work.

After the keynote I planned to go to SOA260, SAP Technology: Putting it all together. But ended up preparing the BPX Process Design Slam evening event with Marilyn Pratt, Greg Chase and others. Finally we had time to sit together physically and to share ideas on how to make the #bpxslam09 a successful event. More in my The BPX Process Design Slam 2009 of this fun evening event.

BPM160, SAP NetWeaver BPM for Business Process Experts

It was hard to choose between this session and BPM161 which had a more developers approach. Decided for the BPX version in order to validate how SAP is trying to involve the business people in SAP projects. To bridge the gap between business and IT will facilitate them working together and by that deliver innovative solutions at high speed. To do so business and IT have to agree on the same language, that can be BPMN and SAP NetWeaver BPM can be the tool to be used by both BPX and developers.
Great new feature is to have a business friendly modeler. Without all kind of techie errors, business people will start using the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio. What about a light version, meant for business people?

DemoJam

The biggest difference with previous years was that DemoJam was more about ‘Demo’ than ‘Jam’. None of the participants were actually coding on stage. I thought that this was a prerequisite? Nothing wrong with the demo’s, don’t get me wrong. Just different than last years.
Again a lot of Business Objects infiltration. Things just look very fancy when BOBJ dashboards are used.
Funny thing is that Yowie was the winner on Twitter whilst the live audience chose for BOBJ on an iPhone, lots of Business Objects people in the room? Suggestion for next year is to incorporate voting via Twitter.
Make up your own mind by watching the DemoJam replay.

Wednesday

BPM260, Best practices through simple samples using SAP NetWeaver BPM and ES Workplace

With the service repository getting filled with more and more services it becomes harder to find the right one for your process. Remember the SE37 dilemma? Lots of function modules or BAPI’s with a name that sort of describes what you want to do. But no documentation and thus a hard job to actually find the right one and to learn how to use it.
The ES workplace is enhanced with two great features:

Example data which show what data needs to be provided and what you will get as a result.
Simple sample apps, downloadable example applications which can be imported in SAP NetWeaver BPM to get a kick start for your own process.

BPM162, Debugging, Monitoring, Traceability and Troubleshooting with SAP NetWeaver BPM

This show got cancelled. Sad news as this is one of the key success areas of SAP NetWeaver BPM. Wish I could watch the USA replay.

SAP TV

Live interview by Marilyn Pratt with Wout de Jong, Caspar Laar and me about the BPX Process Design Slam of Tuesday evening.

Watch the SAP TV replay.

BPM262, SAP NetWeaver BPM Integration with Visual Composer

This session unfortunately got hacked by lots of ‘beatures’, bugs or features. I didn’t make it to the interesting Visual Composer part as the process in BPM just didn’t want to get error free. Finally our instructor stated to start all over again. Not really an option as time was running out. I will have to wait for the CE7.2 download version to do this at home.

BPM264, Asynchronous Communication and correlation handling with SAP NetWeaver BPM

BPM in CE7.2 gets extended with intermediate events. Processes can be modeled as they are. Sometimes a process has to wait for another process, maybe in another system, to complete. This feature makes it possible.
I made it to the end and got all exercises working. Great session.

Friday

BPM113, Eneco implementing outage management with SAP NetWeaver BPM

Real life story on using SAP NetWeaver BPM for outage management. An existing, mostly manual, process has turned into an automated process with manual intervention only at process steps that require so.
Eneco/Stedin had process management at 3 levels:

Business view, modeled with Casewise
BPM, modeled with SAP NetWeaver BPM
ERP, modeled with Solution Manager

Their biggest challenge was to manage the disappointments from previous SOA projects and the prejudices on SAP flexibility and user friendliness.

BPX Process Design Slam debrief

Watch the replay about evening results, plans for SAP TechEd Bangalore and ideas for 2010.

Enterprise geeks

Enterprise Geeks interview by Thomas Jung with Marilyn Pratt and me on the BPX Process Design Slam and evil plans for 2010. Listen to the replay.

Agile meetup at the Expert Networking Sessions area

We had a lively discussion on Agile, Scrum and SAP. Currently I am involved in a large SOA SAP development project. Our Agile, Scrum approach is key in executing this project successfully. At the meetup spotted opportunities to apply the approach to the BI area as well.
In a more traditional SAP project, implementation of ECC Finance and Logistics functionality, Scrum doesn’t seem to be the first methodology that comes in mind. However I still believe that aspects of agile can be applied in such a project as well. Short iterations, multiple feedback moments and real team collaboration will ensure team focus on the end results. We need to collect experiences in that area.

One more day

Three days fully packed with sessions, hands-on training, discussions, meet ups, … I think we need one more day. Why is SAP TechEd USA offering one more day than Europe? With one more day the community events can get the time slots that they deserve, not just after the DemoJam. A new day does not mean that you need a lot more sessions. Please plan popular sessions at 2 or 3 time slots. It makes planning my personal agenda easier.
Please help me and put this in your evaluation form as well.

Final words

Great to see how SAP integrated Twitter in the event. Screensavers everywhere to get live updates from participants. Next stop is to get audience participation during keynote via Twitter, 2010?

When you are a frequent visitor you can clearly see the increments in SAP products. Besides the hands-on training and the latest roadmaps, SAP TechEd is also a great event to actually meet all the SDN/BPX bloggers, co-tweeters and SAP Mentors. Here the collaboration of the future is composed, beyond company borders within communities formed by people of the same mind.

Want to share SAP TechEd experiences? Join me at SAP Inside Track Eindhoven or Bonn.