We all only have 168 hrs a week.
Lets say we sleep for 8 hrs a night, or 56 hrs a week
Lets say we spend an additional 12 hrs a week eating
So we now have 100 hrs remaining.
Say we sell 40 hrs to our boss and use about 8 hrs commuting.
This leaves use with about 52 hrs to distribute between our partners, kids, hobbies and relaxation.
Realistically, this is often more like 40 hours.

I am a big fan of anything that saves me time or automates something, in short, improving my productive time. And in an increasingly digital and mobile world, it is important that it is accessible from anywhere. From a “Getting Things Done” (GTD) perspective, ToDo lists are equivalent of the everyday “runway” tasks (as opposed to 10,000″, 20,000″.. tasks). Through the years I have tried many systems. These have ranged from complex FiloFax paper and electronic based systems to simple ToDo in my planner pad. In general what I am looking for is:

• Simple but with adequate features
• Access it from anywhere with an interned connection.
• Classify and group the Tasks
• Prompt me for tasks due and do not show me tasks that are not due
• Prioritize my tasks
• Add notes
• Free or low cost

Towards the end of 2006, I discovered a free online tool called Remember the Milk which more than met my criteria. It is one of the new breed of Web2.0 web applications (with the creation of some modern programming languages like AJAX and the new ideas of social networking, it is now possible to create complete interactive applications online that also can take advantage of networking of multiple users – known as Web2.0). Here is a screen print of the application.

And here is a second screen print of the tasks tab.

As you can see, you can create context specific lists. And not only that, but you can then tag (one or more simply free form descriptors) each individual task. And all the tags are displayed in a tag cloud (also known as word clouds).

The relative size of the word indicates the relative importance of the word (calculated by the number of & priority of tasks tagged with this word). It is a simple visual representation of the tasks and their importance. Each task can have:

• Due date
• Repeat
• Time Estimate
• Location – links to Google Maps
• URL
• Number of time postponed
• Shared with
• Notes

Some other great features are the ability to share task lists or individual tasks, and get a daily notification of your tasks due today and overdue tasks. This makes it easy to allow other users to see what you are busy with and for you to manage your own task list.

All in all, it is a really impressive little tool and I have found that it helped me immensely to save time and plan my time and tasks. Be sure to read the help notes and the blog to learn more about more tricks and features.

I highly recommend that you try this application. That’s all for now.

Regards
The SAPGuy

If there is one key to a successful implementation, it is simply this:

TESTING !!!

Duh. Well that’s obvious. Well if it’s that obvious, why do so many implementations fail to do a decent job of it? It just amazes me, the number of times that I am standing behind a user doing go live support, and something does not work. Often, this is Day 1 of go live. Was this not tested?

What Types of Testing are there?

Through the years, I have compiled the following list of testing types that must be done.

Ignore any of them, at your peril.
This can and will cost you a smooth implementation and a lot of money.
Users will hate the system, politically, it will not be seen as a success and the costs to fix things can literally go on for years.
Just when you thought the cost of implementation was over, it will go on, and on, and on..

You get the idea.

Look carefully at this list. Notice one thing: the types of testing, generally correspond to the phases of a project and they are often done by different groups of people.

• Functional testing
  Does the application work as designed? This can be a standard SAP business process or a customer specific extension of the code. It can be executed by any team member or the users.
• Unit testing
  This is also known as horizontal testing. Does the process work on it’s own? Ignore all integration. Is it doing what it should be doing on it’s own? In Sales and Distribution (SD), this may be from order to billing.
  
• Integration Testing
  This is also known as vertical testing. After unit testing is successful, does the module or process integrate correctly with other modules (example: If it posted to Financials, are the postings correct?)
• User Testing
  This is crucial. The most successful implementations always second some key users to the project (and backfill their positions temporarily). And note that testing for a single week will generally not cut it. It will require longer involvement and possibly ongoing involvement by the user(s). Users always find things that project members miss or never thought us.  Lets face it, they use the system every day.
  

The old tongue in cheek joke is: “Without Users, this system would be perfect”.
But in truth, their involvement and sign off, is crucial to your successful implementation.
Remember, as far as they are concerned, this is just a “dumb tool” to help them do their jobs.
Management may be looking for the statistics and the integration.

The user does not care !!!
All he/she wants to know is: “Will this help me do my job better?”

That’s been my experience. Everybody wants to do a good job. There is nothing worse than having a tool that makes my job difficult.

• Performance Testing
  In the past three years I have been working in Call Centres. So I have become acutely aware of performance. In one of my clients, a key metric was a 20 second order (we had to built a custom front-end to order entry)!

  In other client, we spent a year developing a custom solution to track freebies, put it in production, and then discovered that the “nightly” job run, ran for seven days !!! It took us another 4 months to get the same program to run in 7 minutes !!

  Often performance testing is neglected or poorly done. And if you are running a multinational roll out, you had better get it right.

  A lot depends on your development environment here. Do you have a box with enough “live” data to test on. And how close does this match your production environment?
  

• Regression testing
  In the last few years I have been involved in the medical devices industry with several clients. They have to comply with the FDA and run so called “validated systems”. In the last four or five years, SOX has also been a huge impact to SAP implementations. So I have become painfully aware of the need for both doing and documenting regression testing. It has always been done, but the need to document it has not always been  required.

  What is it? Simply put: If you change anything (a configuration setting, a process, a program), you have to test everything related to that change.

  Integration is one of the massive advantages in SAP. But it can also be curse when you are making changes. Because by changing a small thing, you can effect everything. All implementations learn this, usually the hard way.

Practical example:
An recent client told me this story. A change was made. It was tested in the test environment, integration environment and again in the staging environment. Everything looked great. They promoted it to Production.

Production crashed !!!
The system was done, worldwide, for 3 days !!!

Turns out, that it was an Oracle bug, which only showed up in a multiple application server environment. None of the testing nor development systems had multiple application servers – They never do. So you just never know.

• Migration testing
  This is a type of regression testing and refers particularly to an upgrade. Take your time here. Things break in upgrades. Particularly if you have many custom programs. Or you use GUIXT to make screen changes (by default it identifies screen fields by their description. So if the SAP description changes in an upgrade, it will not work. Easy to fix).

Who should do the Testing?

This is key. Not all of us are good testers, period. To be a good tester, you need to be detail orientated. People have said that I am a good tester. But, to be honest, I am an OK tester. I know what needs to be tested, but I can only handle a certain amount of detail before it drives me nuts. Find people who love “breaking things”.

Make sure you identify uses with these characteristics too. Better yet, if they are in responsible positions (head CSR,..). They will have to answer to their fellow colleagues, why the system that they tested, does not work properly or makes their jobs difficult. In my last implementation, there were five people (rare) on my team who were excellent testers. I knew that if I wanted some of my work tested, to give it to them. They always found stuff that I had missed.

Automating Testing

I am covering this not because it is typically done, but because it is typically not done. Clients do not want to spend the money. But, long term, this could save you a fortune. Now it is not easy and requires an initial investment to set it up. And a smaller ongoing investment to maintain. But the long term value is enormous. Think about this: Typically, an upgrade can take 3 months if you have an average amount of custom code (most of my implementation have a lot of custom code). And most of that time is spent testing. And it requires a team of bodies. What if you knew exactly what had to be tested and could run a series of automated test scripts, to tell you in a few hours, what had broken? How much time and money would this save?

Remember, most of us are not good testers. And if it is not your strength, you often miss stuff, and TAKE LONG. So by using good testers to set up the tests initially.

If you found this article informative, feel free to add comments to my blog. And pass it on.

Regards
The SAPGuy

How Productive are you? Or, phrased differently, how much time did you spend today advancing towards your primary goals?

About a year ago, John Reese (a famous Internet marketer), wrote an article about getting away from your computer and thinking on paper (or a clip board or a white board). He argued that this was a critical factor in his own productivity and success (which is considerable – he created the first million dollar day in Internet marketing). In fact, he has a planning and strategy room in his house where there are no computers allowed !! He is convinced that this is a significant factor in his success.  This is quite a statement from someone who makes his money from computers and the Internet.

I have been playing with that concept, and by gum, I think he is right. I know that if I am struggling with something, the best thing for me to do, is to get away from the computer (literally take a step back), go to another room and get out my favourite pen and a pad of paper. Or alternatively, drag out the white board and rethink the whole problem again from a higher level. It seems as if the following is true:

1. A computer can be a focus killer that degrades productivity.
   Why? Let me ask you something. How many computer applications do you have active now? I have 5. Research has shown that we can only keep 5–7 things active in out brains at one time. Therefore, I already have 5 distractions on my desktop. That only leaves 2 to get my work done. And probably the biggest time stealing culprit, is my email. If I really want to concentrate, I close it down.Experiment:
   Never read your EMail first thing in the Morning !!
   It may cost you an hour if you are lucky !!
   Try it and see what it does to your morning productivity.
   
2. Computers can link concepts and ideas into amazingly powerful networks of related topics (and sometimes unrelated). But that power can also be an enormous distraction that is another time and focus stealer.  Example: I just noticed there was a new version of my blog software (WordPress). An upgrade is typically a 15 minute job at the most. 2 hours later: I have upgraded Snagit; backed up my website; solved an annoying installation problem; and, oh, almost forgot – I also upgraded my blog. How much money did I just earn? Zip !! And I just lost 2 hours, never to be recovered again, and forgot what I was doing in the first place.

   Remember: This is your life, and it is ending 1 second at a time !!
   

3. There is something about writing things down on paper. It appears to connect with your brain and helps you visualize the problem better, which helps solve it. And if you write something down over and over again, such as a daily review of your medium and long term goals, magic happens !! You will be amazed !! Try it.Digital todo lists are very useful and have some nice features, like rolling over tasks that were not completed today. I use one  (www.sapguy.com/todo) that I will review as some stage, as I have found it awesome. However, I have found that a combination of digital and a paper todo list works best for me. Turning back to paper has boosted my productivity at least fourfold.
   

Hope you found my little insight useful. I know it has boosted my productivity. Feel free to add comments about your own experiences.

Signing off

The SAPGuy