How can I support my change requests and projects by using the Performer Suite?

This document provides an overview of how to use the Performer Suite to support your SAP BW change requests and project delivery.
The product of the Performer Suite supports you in the preparations and execution of projects. It reduces the workload and also accelerates the entire process.

Summary

Do you have another change request or project to participate in or to deliver?
Several of those challenges are ahead of you:

You have to estimate the change request and project accurately to have robust planning.
Understand all the dependencies within the system and all the follow-up details going from one object to the next.
Parts of the requirements are Query definitions. You have a strange feeling that something similar had already been implemented some time ago, but you are unsure what and where?
You work together with external suppliers and:
- Not all developers from the supplier keep the naming convention, but you usually realize it in the end, as it is too much of an effort to always check everything.
- It is not easy or challenging or seems maybe even impossible to preserve the knowledge of your supplier. Once they are gone again, you don't dare to touch the implementation, or you are very careful, and it takes you a long time to understand the implementation?
- Do you have to search for a long time within the implementations or maybe even reverse engineer the information to prepare the change?
Bugfixing is sometimes very difficult and complex as there are many components involved? From where, how, and what data is loaded within the BW?
You are occupied with searching for the root cause of a problem (data-wise) rather than fixing it?
The handover to the maintenance colleagues or from the external suppliers sometimes leaves a "strange feeling" in your guts, that there must be more, but you cannot pinpoint what is missing?
When colleagues leave or change the team, there is mostly an outcry, how difficult it will be without them, as they had all the relevant knowledge for area X?

Challenges

You have to do many of those tasks above manually! Who likes to walk through 10ths or 100ths of BW Entities, Queries, Transformations, DTPs, etc. to understand something or search for specific information? How to show and represent all investigations so that you don't have to do them over again for the next problem, evaluation, estimation, etc.? Of course, errors can creep in here by making mistakes in the manual steps. As this is too much effort, you decide to go for the "supposedly" simple and easy way, or you have the feeling this is the only possible way and follow your feelings and rough manual investigations rather than more facts to estimate and evaluate how something should have been done.

There is no proper support for those activities above from SAP standard tools.

Solution

Use the Performer Suite for example to:

Phase	Activities	How to support them with the Performer Suite	Possible Saving (on each Activity)
Analysis	Create a basis for discussion with the Functional Department about what is needed in terms of reporting Identify unneeded objects that can be deleted and cleaned up? Check Data Flows for (also for nested ABAP or AMDP) logic that is not always immediately visible! Understand the overall complexity in mapping for the whole data flow at once Identify Queries that haven't been used for a long time. Understand the dependencies from one BW Object to nearly all other elements (including ABAP or AMDP) Identify ABAP types, and statements (SELECT SINGLE, BREAK-POINT, etc.) that might be problematic, across the entire system. Understand what is on which system available. Are all Queries/InfoProviders/etc. transported and available in all Systems? Are all emergency changes from PROD maintained in DEV as well? Find Queries with specific aggregations or usage of particular Objects (NDIV#/NOERR/etc.).	Matrix of Usage (System Scout) There are several System Scout functions for that: InfoProvider without Data Flows Data Loads and Usages Show inactive Entities Unused InfoObjects Variable Analyzer Data Flow Analysis Data Lineage of BW Entities Use "Grid View" with "Column Chooser" and the column "Last Used Date": Column Chooser Usage of BW Entities BW Code Scan Mass comparison: System Comparison. Individual comparison: Analyze and Compare Entities (can also be triggered from the mass comparison for different elements; detailed mass comparison coming soon) Key Figure Collection with search in Column Details or BW Documentation, with text search in the resulting document	40%-60% 20%-50% 35%-45% 20%-40% ~5% 5%-15% 5%-15% 50%-80% 5%-15%
Design	coming soon... If you have a good idea, please let us know how we can support you even more and create a feature-request!
Implementation	You need to take over data models to BW/4HANA or BW on HANA while still adjusting existing naming conventions. You want to take over Queries to the new and adjusted data model to secure basic processes within functional or reporting departments. You need to translate elements in the Data Warehouse to reflect several languages using a dictionary instead of doing this manually. You want to use consistent Naming Conventions during development.	Migration Booster Copy Reporting Elements Translation Steward Naming Conventions BW with System Scout (also possible for transports)	80%-95% 80%-95% 50%-70% 5%-15%
Testing	For Bug Fixing aspects - see also Phase "Support" If you have a good idea, please let us know how we can support you even more and create a feature-request!
Deploy	If you have a good idea, please let us know how we can support you even more and create a feature-request!
Support	Support general resolutions for data: You need to understand how mappings are done within Data Flows, to be able to identify errors. Here it is also essential to understand what ABAP or AMDP routines do and if any relevant DTP or IP filter and selections influence processing or that has been changed due to singular events (testing, one-time loading, etc.) but have not been reversed.	Data Flow Analysis - here especially: Mapping Analysis of InfoObjects Scan for Look-ups Show DTPs and InfoPackages incl. Filters	15%-40% 20%-50% ~10% ~10%
Documentation	Preserve knowledge for later use, changes in team structure, etc. Creating documentation for different target groups (Functional Department, Audits, IT, etc.)	BW Commenting (Docu Performer) BW Documentation especially: Scenarios	at least 15% depending on how well used later! 10%-40%