User testing/signoff procedures

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

Most likely every SAP client has some kind of a procedure in place for the user testing and signoff before the transports may be moved to production. From your experience, what procedures have you seen (not just in the SAP world) and which ones, in your opinion, work the best?

Here are two examples from my past jobs as a programmer:

1) Developer prepares testing scenarios (in Excel); Business Analyst runs them through and marks each line with the result. This spreadsheet is then embedded in another document that lists all the items to be implemented in that week (scheduled weekly implementation).

2) A signoff form (Word template) is prepared by developer/functional analyst and emailed to the business user responsible for testing. The form includes basic information (usualy there is a corresponding ticket) and developer's name/date as form of a signature. The user then signs/dates the form and returns it to the developer. The form is forwarded to Basis admin as an approval to move the transports.

In perfect world, the signoff should not be an additional burden for a developer yet need to ensure that testing has been performed properly. In reality, this may be difficult to achieve. As a developer, I liked the 2nd option better, but it sometimes lead to users signing off without any testing (and then guess who gets blamed when something doesn't work).

What are your thoughts?

[Lakshmipathi]

Invariably, users dont have authorisation to access either to development client or quality client. So as a functional consultant, once we get the documentation on users' new requirement, I will configure / customize the requirement, test it and if found okay, release the request in development and move it to quality. Again in quality, one more test documents would be generated and a screen shot of the document flow / FI posting would be sent to user's mail for their confirmation.

Once they give green signal, the request will be moved to production client. At times, users again change their original requirement once we mailed the test documents. So again we have to start the process from development client to quality and then to production.

We can get the users' confirmation on the test documents generated from development client but in most of the cases, configuration settings in development client would not be in line with production client and in order to ensure a trouble free process, the above process is being followed.

thanks

G. Lakshmipathi