Global Change Management

lpryor

Active Member
Hi,
My company has begun a project to implement JDE world wide. We currently
run JDE A7.3cume11 in the US. We've been on JDE since 1991.
We are developing a Global model for implementation at all locations at
cume 12 or 13 depending on the rollout.
The US locations will "convert" to the Global Model, next spring. Prior
to this we need to develop a methodology to handle change management on a
Global scale over multiple time zones. Each Major location, i.e. Europe,
U.S. Asia, etc. has a very large AS400. We will run JDE independently,
but have for consistency we are trying to maintain the same vanilla JDE,
modifications and custom programming in sync with each other.
We hope to share a central repository at our Parent site in Japan. This
site will maintain copies of everyone else's, localizations as well, I am
expecting in separate environments on the same box. We in the US have
many concerns about how we can do this. We have been told that a program
can only be checked out by one programmer at a time. Well, we expect that
this rule will be difficult to abide by, just because of having to work on
production problems at the same time you have a program checked out for an
enhancement project.
As you can imagine we have modified JDE quite a bit over the years and,
with the usage growing to a global scope within our company, we are
expecting even more.
Any suggestions, or thoughts, or directions to go in, to find more ideas,
would be greatly appreciated. We are looking at software, but that is not
the only solution; much of the process is procedural even when you use
software. A good AS400 or JDE methodology for this is what I am really
looking for but any ideas are gratefully accepted.
If any of you have this situation and are working it out in your company, I
would love to hear from you.

Thanks,

Lynn Pryor
Client Services Manager
Business Engineering Dept.
Murata Electronics
770 319-5128
 
It is true that a program can be under modification by only one programmer
at a time and that is a limitation of the editing tools and the AS/400
itself. The member is locked for updating while it is being changed,
although others can access it in a read-only mode. Some ways around this
would be to copy a program, assign different programmers to different
sections of the program, and then re-assemble the finished program later.
However, since most programs perform single functions, it is not obvious
that this would be very productive, especially since many changes require
modifications scattered all through the program code.

A team approach that we have used successfully on development projects might
work here also, although the members or the team need to be in the same
physical location to be effective.

Having modified JDE quite significantly a number of times, I am having a
hard time seeing where it would be of any great advantage to make
independent simultaneous changes to the same program. Further, assuming that
we are talking about just one copy of the code being used everywhere in your
company, it seems to me that the idea is very likely impractical, if not
impossible.



PMK Consulting Group, Inc.
Information Technology Consultants
Tel: 713-621-7521 Fax: 713-661-7749
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by gparker77 on 8/22/01 08:16 AM.</FONT></P>
 
It is

PMK Consulting Group, Inc.
Information Technology Consultants
Tel: 713-621-7521 Fax: 713-661-7749
 
Lynn,

Once you identify the Change Management packages that you want to evaluate
these would be some excellent questions to ask them. Two of the leading
packages that I evaluated a year ago are Aldon and TurnOver. Since we do
not have your size and complexity we did not ask those types of questions.


It is

Doug Belcher
St Louis MO
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer
A7.3c10
 
Re: RE: Global Change Management

The previous message got cut off, this is what I originally wrote:

Lynn,

Once you identify the Change Management packages that you want to evaluate these would be some excellent questions to ask them. Two of the leading packages that I evaluated a year ago are Aldon and TurnOver. Since we do not have your size and complexity we did not ask those types of questions.

It is true that you can only have a program checked out to one programmer at a time (this is a very *good* thing) but there are methods to handle an emergency checkout. There are also ways to have a centralized AS/400 where the maintenance is done and then distribute the changes to other boxes.

Many of the rules of a Change Management package will be very hard to live with both for you as developers and for your users, however the benefits you will get from it will be more than worth while. Rules for developers such as *no* developer has access to production, except to view, or if a program is checked out for one project request and it's needed by another, that's not an emergency, it has to wait, etc. The users also have to understand that once it goes to QA/QC environment, they are responsible for testing and signing off that it works and it can't be promoted to production until they do. I guess for us that has been a shift in how the users view the system, before a change could be driven into production prior to full testing just to satisfy a major user. Now, if it does not get signed off and approved by the appropriate people, it does not go, period.

We have been using TurnOver for over a year now and it has save us an immense amount of time and effort, but we have to live with the rules it imposes. Keeping track of and promoting the soft-coded items without a lot of work has been a major benefit. Another benefit is if a change gets put into production that causes a problem, it can be reversed out in a matter of minutes without having to worry about whether you have remembered every bit and piece of that promotion. Being able to cycle back through a series of changes to review what was changed and why is also useful. This more than makes up for that fact it is so rigid and forces you into doing things the "long way", i.e. no more "making one small quick change" and putting it into production.

Hope some of these thoughts help you out.



Doug Belcher
St Louis MO
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer
A7.3c10
 
Re: RE: Global Change Management

We have been using Aldon about a year. It does interface with JDE for the most
part, but with some limitations, i.e. the SVR does not get updated correctly
when moving something from a developer's library to test to production. The
entry stays out there as if it is still in the developer's library. (This may be
something in our set up, not sure.)

It does require the mind shift that Doug was referring to for both programmers
and users, but all in all, it does what is needed.




Jill Fralick
ABB Flexible Automation
Auburn Hills, MI 48313
A7.3 cum 10
(248) 391-8618
 
I work as a JDE consultant at one of the Leading Pharmaceutical company who
has factories all over the world and they extensively use ALDON Change
Management System for all the question you have asked. This may be
 
Re: RE: Global Change Management

Jill,

I am very sure that it has something to do with your setup of Aldon. We use
a centralize Development Environment where all sources resides and all the
developers works in that environment. We never had any issue with Aldon
except at time when people compiles using SVR instead of Aldon and breaking
Aldon integrity of maintaining the Shell and the Data base in two different
libraries.

Another Good thing which I liked about Aldon is that when promoting Physical
Files, Aldon can also promote dependent objects if they are mentioned any
where in Aldon environment. This takes cares of the painfull tasks for
searching for programs which uses that file and needs to be recompiled.
Aldon does this by taking the source from Producting environment and
compiling in each enviroment without checking out the source . This happens
all the way to production.

It is very cool neat product.

Regards

Naveed Rahimullah
847 477 0812
----- Original Message -----
From: "jill_a_fralick" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: RE: Global Change Management


most
correctly
The
may be
programmers
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=0&Board=W&Number=1
9451
 
okay first of all can somebody explain why my message is cut into half, any
specific reason or bug in the mailing system.

Here is the full message

---

I work as a JDE consultant at one of the Leading Pharmaceutical company who
has factories all over the world and they extensively use ALDON Change
Management System for all the question you have asked. This may be
 
Naveed,
Still didn't get it all.

Also, when using Aldon you said that everyone worked in the same
development environment? This would not work for us,
as we all have different local modifications. We are allowing the
different comanies to control their own external documents, so there for
the Packslip programs, Invoices, etc are modified differently. Or would
recommend us maintaining all modifications for every company in the same
program and just turn them on or off with processing options?




naveed_rahim55
<naveed_rahim@minds To: [email protected]
pring.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: Global Change Management
owner-jdeworldml@jd
elist.com


08/23/2001 10:13 PM
Please respond to
jdeworld






okay first of all can somebody explain why my message is cut into half, any
specific reason or bug in the mailing system.

Here is the full message

---

I work as a JDE consultant at one of the Leading Pharmaceutical company who
has factories all over the world and they extensively use ALDON Change
Management System for all the question you have asked. This may be


--------------------------
 
Lpryor,

Maintaining multiple modified source in different library is a hell when
time comes for PTF upload or when applying SAR's. I would strongly recommend
the same source with modfications catering all the needs. In this way even a
Global change can be applied while maintaining the all the changes and mods
by all divisions/countires. Aldon does look at each developer and keep
source in each library but source can be shared amongst the developers
provided when promoted to INT or QAE both developers changes go.


----- Original Message -----
From: "lpryor" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: Global Change Management


[email protected]
Change Management
any
who
http://198.144.193.139/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=0&Board=W&Number=1
9882
 
Back
Top