Working with Change Impact Analysis

Use Change Impact Analysis in Test Manager to identify and assess the impact of proposed SAP system changes before deployment.

Overview

Change Impact Analysis represents the process of identifying and assessing the impact of a proposed change to an SAP system. It is a proactive approach that contributes to the reliability, stability, and efficiency of SAP systems.

Change Impact Analysis is a systematic process to understand the potential effects that a proposed change can have on a SAP system. The primary goal is to proactively manage and mitigate risks associated with software changes.

In the Heatmap, hover over the information icon next to Analyze Transports to see an overview of the impact of changes on your SAP system.

Select Analyze Transports and understand the impact of changes on your SAP system using Change Impact Analysis.

The impact of changes is shown as Fits and Gaps. Below is a description for the two states:

• Fit: The transactions impacted by the selected transports that are covered by test cases.
• Gap: The transactions impacted by the selected transports that are not covered by test cases.

Prerequisites

To enable Change Impact Analysis, go through the following prerequisite steps.

Viewing tabs for SAP Changes

Change Impact Analysis offers a comprehensive way to consider the potential impact of changes (Fits and Gaps) on your SAP system. It does this by presenting three different view tabs that help examine transaction relationships:

• UI: Displays transactions impacted by the selected transports.
• API: Displays technical interfaces impacted by the selected transports, such as SAP BAPI, SAP RFC, SAP QUERY, and SAP IDOC.
• Security: Displays security transactions and corresponding users impacted by the selected transports.

Checking the Change Impact Analysis display

Review the two-level heatmap view generated by Change Impact Analysis to understand which application components and transactions are impacted by the selected transports, and whether each is a Fit or a Gap.

Change Impact Analysis, similar to the Heatmap offers a two-level view:

1. Application components—containers inside the heatmap that contain all the transactions used inside a specific application component.

2. Transactions—boxes inside the application containers that contain data about a certain transaction or program, such as: name, SAP code, and the percentage of test relevance in the heatmap. You can zoom in on a selected area of interest and focus only on a specific SAP component or module.

   • Gap - The transactions impacted by the selected transports that are not covered by test cases.
   • Fit - The transactions impacted by the selected transports that are covered by test cases.
   • Not impacted - The transactions in the transport weren't impacted by the change.

   

Accessing the Change Impact Analysis results

To access the Change Impact Analysis:

1. Open Heatmap.

2. Select Analyze Transports in the top-right.

   • If you don't have Transport units licenses, or if you consumed all your licenses, you will only see an overview of your analyzed transports and impacted transactions.

   

   • If you have unconsumed Transport units licenses, the Transports view opens.

   

Analyzing transports

You can analyze transports in your SAP system, focusing on data only from the last 30 days for retrieval.

1. In the Transports view, next to Retrieve transports from, select a date range within the last 30 days for retrieving transports.
2. After you choose a range of dates, select Search to filter the transports.
3. Select the transports that you want to analyze.
4. Select Analyze transports to generate the Change Impact Analysis. The Change Impact Analysis is generated in the Heatmap View.

Switching view tabs for SAP changes

Change Impact Analysis offers view tabs for switching between the SAP changes that you want to investigate. You can choose what tabs are available in your Change Impact Analysis when configuring the connection.

The available view tabs are:

• UI: This tab is always available, and it displays transactions impacted by the selected transports.
• API: Displays technical interfaces impacted by the selected transports, such as SAP BAPI, SAP RFC, SAP QUERY, and SAP IDOC.
• Security: Displays security transactions and corresponding users impacted by the selected transports.

Under Impact Analysis, select one of these view tabs to investigate the SAP changes in your system.

Figure 1. Change Impact Analysis view tabs

Viewing the test coverage of impacted transactions

In the Change Impact Analysis view you can see the transactions impacted by changes within a transport, and their relevance in your SAP system, based on the ratios you configured for the Heatmap.

To see the impact of changes within a transport on your transactions:

1. Under the heatmap, select Gap to see the transactions that are impacted and aren't assigned to test cases.
2. Under the heatmap, select Fit to see the transactions that are impacted and are assigned to test cases.
3. Under the heatmap, select Not impacted to see the transactions that aren't impacted by the changes.
4. Select Show all (selected by default) to see all the above transactions.

Filtering the impacted transactions

In the Impact Analysis view, you get the option to filter the view of impacted transactions based on different criteria. Irrespective of the view tab, you have the option to filter impacted transactions based on impact types:

• All impact types (default)
• Fits
• Gaps

Depending on the view tab you are currently in, you can filter impact transactions based on the following criteria:

• UI tab – You can filter transactions based on interface types:
  • All interface types (default)
  • [T] - Transaction in SAP WinGui
  • [R] - Report/Program in SAP WinGui
  • [W] - Transaction in SAP WebGui
  • [F] - Application in SAP Fiori

If you are using an RFC connection, the following view tabs are also available:

• API tab – You can filter transactions based on API types:
  • QUERY
  • IDOC
  • RFC
  • BAPI
• Security tab – You can filter transactions based on security types:
  • Security TCode: Displays security TCodes and the user authorized to access them.
  • Transactions: Displays transactions along with their corresponding users.
    Note:

    Information for this security type is not shown in the List view, but you can select Export to view it as a CSV file.

  • Users: Displays users along with their corresponding transactions.
    Note:

    Information for this security type is not shown in the List View, but you can select Export to view it as a CSV file.

For further investigation, you can select Export to retrieve the filtered transactions in a CSV file.

Generating test cases for impacted SAP transactions

You can generate manual test cases for transactions marked as Gap, using Autopilot, directly from the Analyze Transports step. For the full procedure, including prerequisites, RAG/Context Grounding options, and refining generated tests, see Generate tests for SAP transactions.

Creating test sets for impacted transactions

Group the impacted transactions identified by Change Impact Analysis into a new test set so you can schedule and execute coverage tests for those transactions.

1. In the Change Impact Analysis view, select Table view to switch to a table of the impacted transactions.

2. Inspect the impacted transactions, based on the following information:

   • Code: the unique code of a transaction.
   • Name: the name of the transaction.
   • Transport: the transport that a transaction is part from.
   • Relevance: the relevance of a transaction based on the ratios configured at the Heatmap level.
   • Process: the process used to publish the test cases that cover the impacted transactions.
   • Impact: the type of impact of the change on the testing status of the transaction. This can be either Fit, Gap, or N/A.
   • Test Set: the test set where the impacted transactions belong to.

3. Select the transactions that you want to add to a test set.

4. Select Add to New Test.

Figure 2. Adding impacted transactions to new test sets

5. Create a new test set.
6. When you're done creating test sets for gaps in your SAP testing portfolio, select Finish.

Result

The Change Impact Analysis is generated and displays Fit and Gap transactions for the selected transports. Impacted transactions can be added to test sets and test cases can be generated for any identified gaps.