“Engineering Cross Functions” Days (ECF Days). Wow!!! The very title of the conference to be held at SAP Labs was mind boggling to me. Well, when I was given the opportunity to represent my company at the conference, I grabbed it with both hands. The conference was to be held on 2 days, the 17th and 18th of August 2011 and we were scheduled to be there on the 18th of August. The broad objectives of the ECF Days was for SAP to understand how their customers test the SAP Products and for customers to understand how SAP tests their products internally and also provide a platform for both SAP and their customers to share the best practices of testing SAP products.
The ECF Day began with the welcome and introduction of us customers at SAP Labs. Apart from MindTree, the other customers who had been invited were – Vodafone, TVS, HUL, Infosys, GMR Holdings and ABB. The IT - head of Vodafone shared some of the best practices in Testing followed in Vodafone, it was great to see that at Vodafone they followed a pretty robust methodology of testing using one the best automation tools available in the market for SAP Testing – SAP TAO (Test Acceleration and Optimization). It was also very interesting for us to note that Vodafone also used the Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA) to track all the changes that were made on the SAP systems, monitor those changes and modify your automated test scripts to take these changes in to account during execution.
This was followed by presentations by the other clients of SAP in their respective pods. We had a slot for two hours, where we could share our best practices with the testing folks at SAP Labs. We spoke to them about how we use Mind Mapping techniques to document myriad information like test environment, functionalities, test steps, questions, bugs, etc… which is especially useful when testing in an agile environment. We also talked about how we use ‘SAP GUI Scripting’ to automate some parts of the test which are repeated over and over again. The response from the folks at SAP Labs was terrific and enthused us to deliver the sessions again and again to packed audiences.
Post lunch, we had sessions by the testing folks at SAP Labs where we got to see demos of a lot of cool stuff that the folks there were using to test SAP Products. There was a demo on SAP TAO and having worked on TAO, I must say it is one of the coolest tools to work on and the way it seamlessly integrates with HP Quality Center and SAP Solution Manager is fantastic. There was also a session on ‘Model Based Exploratory Testing’, a new tool that makes it possible for users to create, modify and execute test scripts on the fly and I should admit that I can’t wait to get my hands on the tool and start using it. There were also sessions in the ‘Extended Computer Aided Test Tool’ (eCATT) and how it can be integrated with HP Quick Test Professional. Another really cool session was where we were shown how we can do performance testing on SAP ECC using ‘Transaction Codes’ (TCodes) like ST05, ST30, ST33, STAD, SE30, etc… which are already inbuilt in the SAP ECC system.
Well, in total I must say that this was one awesome conference where I got to learn a lot of really cool stuff on the topic of testing SAP Products and hopefully people could also learn something from me. At the close of the conference, we met with the Senior Management in SAP Labs who briefed us of their plans to have more such testing events in the future and collaborate a lot more in the SAP Testing space and also give us access to their new products and tools. Well, hopefully this initiative comes through and we get to work on the cutting edge technology that is being developed at SAP Labs very soon. Until then, there is a lot of research and learning that I need to be doing in the SAP Testing space from what I learned from the conference at SAP Labs.
The ECF Day began with the welcome and introduction of us customers at SAP Labs. Apart from MindTree, the other customers who had been invited were – Vodafone, TVS, HUL, Infosys, GMR Holdings and ABB. The IT - head of Vodafone shared some of the best practices in Testing followed in Vodafone, it was great to see that at Vodafone they followed a pretty robust methodology of testing using one the best automation tools available in the market for SAP Testing – SAP TAO (Test Acceleration and Optimization). It was also very interesting for us to note that Vodafone also used the Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA) to track all the changes that were made on the SAP systems, monitor those changes and modify your automated test scripts to take these changes in to account during execution.
This was followed by presentations by the other clients of SAP in their respective pods. We had a slot for two hours, where we could share our best practices with the testing folks at SAP Labs. We spoke to them about how we use Mind Mapping techniques to document myriad information like test environment, functionalities, test steps, questions, bugs, etc… which is especially useful when testing in an agile environment. We also talked about how we use ‘SAP GUI Scripting’ to automate some parts of the test which are repeated over and over again. The response from the folks at SAP Labs was terrific and enthused us to deliver the sessions again and again to packed audiences.
Post lunch, we had sessions by the testing folks at SAP Labs where we got to see demos of a lot of cool stuff that the folks there were using to test SAP Products. There was a demo on SAP TAO and having worked on TAO, I must say it is one of the coolest tools to work on and the way it seamlessly integrates with HP Quality Center and SAP Solution Manager is fantastic. There was also a session on ‘Model Based Exploratory Testing’, a new tool that makes it possible for users to create, modify and execute test scripts on the fly and I should admit that I can’t wait to get my hands on the tool and start using it. There were also sessions in the ‘Extended Computer Aided Test Tool’ (eCATT) and how it can be integrated with HP Quick Test Professional. Another really cool session was where we were shown how we can do performance testing on SAP ECC using ‘Transaction Codes’ (TCodes) like ST05, ST30, ST33, STAD, SE30, etc… which are already inbuilt in the SAP ECC system.
Well, in total I must say that this was one awesome conference where I got to learn a lot of really cool stuff on the topic of testing SAP Products and hopefully people could also learn something from me. At the close of the conference, we met with the Senior Management in SAP Labs who briefed us of their plans to have more such testing events in the future and collaborate a lot more in the SAP Testing space and also give us access to their new products and tools. Well, hopefully this initiative comes through and we get to work on the cutting edge technology that is being developed at SAP Labs very soon. Until then, there is a lot of research and learning that I need to be doing in the SAP Testing space from what I learned from the conference at SAP Labs.
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