Question:
Hi
I have to agree with your comments, even on the BW courses they state that the BW area is a very 'grey' area of blurring, which doesn't help when your trying to deal with problems and get systems working/performing.
I work for a large multinational, been in Basis for 5 years and last 1 year have been working with the BW team and trying to get my head round who does what, even down to the design of infocubes, which info objects to use, is it best to aggregate or not, ODS or PSA etc?, problem is these are not questions with a definite yes or no answer, it depends on your system/data and user requirements, like reporting and Bex, such a grey area as a technical support in the past, I would not deal with that, but technical and application support are in the same area on BW, like with basis, i could say 'fico error' speak to fico team, the lines were quite clear!!!!
So, your not alone ), and from what i see on courses, lots of people are in a similar situation!!!
Answer:
Very interesting. but quite normal. I love this forum and it is immensely helpful.
Anyway, I see BW implementation as a team work where the organization must commit to define proper stucture and assign the roles and responsibilites.
BW implementation must be implemented technically by BW technical people ( BASIS, DBA, Data modelling and Extractions). Functional people should provide the busincess case and process with specificatons. Technical people needs to convert that into business model and proivde the datamodel to the functional consultants to create reports in a way it makes sense with the end users. Functional people can convert numbers on the report into business meaning. Technical consultants will not be able to make that sense.
All I am trying to say is that ,a team work can avoid the situation that you are in. My suggestion is that, if you are in a resonisbile position, quickly create an organization structure and assign the roles and responsibilites.
Good luck
Answer:
Hello there
Thank you for your replies.
...the organization must commit to define proper structure and assign the roles and responsibilities.
Our guest has a point. Clear definition of the roles and responsibilities is the only way.
But what I am most interested in is what we mean by “Technical people”. As I already mentioned I do a lot of modelling, but I have never customized the system. And I have never heard about this aspect in the courses that I have attended to.
I know that there are really competent people in this Forum. Do they do all the work them selves. Or do they draw the line some how.
I hope that I am not getting misunderstood. I would love to learn about all the aspects of Business Warehouse, but I think that it is important, as our guest said, to have some kind clear definition of the tasks for each of these roles.
For instance:
Who configures the web server?
Who configures the transport?
I think that the problem with our organization is that we really do not have an administrator. We have, as I have mentioned, a firm who maintains our servers. And I do not think that their understanding of maintaining is “administration”.
Best regards
L2L
Answer:
i think all of us experienced same problem one time or the other,basically because all these tasks are interlinked.You need to go there and come here and then go there again. so we need to be in constant touch with what is happenning there and here.and which should happen first. As some suggested it is nothing but team effort.
But then there comes a question when fixing responsibilities come in. Definitely we dont shy away from leaning or doing work.Every piece of work belong to us.More so I love doing everything myself(if i am confident enough to do so) as it gives me immense control on everything i am dealing with. But unfortunately it is not the case.Infact even the thing that i am doing would have been authored by some one else(if its production already) so its always prudent to have some one who spent more time on it.
L2L said he did lot of modelling? what kind of modelling? modelling technically? it needs lot of functional understanding not only of the subject theoratically but the business process of paricular organization.
what is the best model for one company may not be so for another,though technically it might be!!
but when it comes to responsibilities, yes we need to define !! one weak person in the link can spoil everything and blame come s to everyone involved. I recently lost a very brilliant and wonderful project manager because of this. I know the mess that was done ,i know it well, that Proj manager is not responsible wholly, but he lost his head.
but for fixing the problem this demarkation is not at all helpful to us in any way. We need to learn as much as possible and start doing things. ofcourse we should not poke our nose in what others are authorised for doing it.And we must not shy from asking help. and prudent enough to prove that we did not do anything wrong as far as what we did is concerned.
IF you think that some thing can not be handled by you better approach anybody who can do it. if he/she says its not in his/her field then put it across. take out your helpnessness and seek help. nothing goes wrong.Its your experience which saves you.if we lose job we wil have experience!!::--)But atleast the system will be saved and so is the hardwork done by many people and finally saves company'bucks!!
all the best
rao duttaluri
Answer:
Hello there
Thank you for your comment rao.
L2L said he did lot of modelling? what kind of modelling? modelling technically?
By modelling I mean creating and modifying...Yes technically.
Best regards
L2L
Answer:
Hi all,
In our project, we have an organization structure, team which has BASIS, DBA, BW technical lead, Team lead, functional consultants and BW technical consultants.
In the team, we have variety of skills, so we do not see it as a problem. Yes, we strongly recognized that functional consultants are suppose to drive the business case and technical convert the functional requirements into technical implementation. The technical people implement the BW in a right way AND functional consultant define the requirement in a right way.
I consider BW functional consultants as Subject Matter Experts( SME) of business requirements and Technical people are SME's technical requirements.
L2L, this is how I would approach to your problem. In our project, I am a BW technical team lead. I believe, that there must be a counterpart from the client side. I regularly train and keep abreast all the development of BW to the client. Whenever, there is a problem or anticipate a problem, I directly involve him in the administration. It works out well in our situation.
just a 2 cents of worth.
Answer:
A couple more cents..
Whether or not a particular task falls on one side of a line or another the important issue for you, your manager and your organization is what is the most effective way to get these tasks done.
It is probably not a good use of a permanent employee's time to learn complex tasks that only have to be done once. If your Basis support doesn't have the necessary skills I'd suggest establishing a relationship with a consultancy that can provide additional ad-hoc support. (We've had great BW/Basis support through Realtech, no doubt there are other companies that offer similar services).
If your regular Basis support organization learns that you are obtaining additional Basis services it may encourage them to lift their game -- if you are paying them to support a BW system it seems reasonable to expect them to provide more than R/3 Basis.
For your sake I think it is important to discuss this with your manager; I'm sure he or she would rather pay for a few days consulting than have you possibly spend several frustrating weeks doing something you are not trained for and will probably never do again. If you do not raise the issue any subsequent problems will reflect back on you.
Answer:
Hello there
Thank you very much for your comments.
I think that I am realizing that our problem is that we do not have a server administrator
We do have consultants that help us with the technical implementation, but they do not administrate the server (which is understandable, because that is not what we are paying them to do).
That leaves us with the firm that maintains our servers. I think the right approach is to find out more about what they mean their job is about (I could always look at the contract).
I can see a long meeting in my crystal ball
Thanks again
L2L
Answer:
Couldn't get in due to problems in BEx, otherwise I would've contributed my 2 bits (or 2 cents, if that's too much!) worth.
In BW, at least till now, most of the stuff that you could do from SPRO, could be done from some transaction or other from AWB. (for list of transactions, browse the table TSTC).
Only of late I see a lot of stuff to done from SPRO (in 3.0B).
Our organization too ( a division of the numero uno company) has a problem when it comes to BW support. I was the only guy supporting it from a security, administration, training, and to some extent basis stanpoints (so much for teamwork ). Of late they realised that it was too much to handle and reframed the contract with our hosting partners to include basis and security in their scope. But the catch is, they still don't know how to go about BW security, and I have to spell out to them what is basis (DBA support, start parameters and other parameters, which can very well be done from the OS, etc.), and what security in BW is, via detailed specifications.
There are still some arguements about what is basis and what is functional, so the grey areas are still not sorted out. SAP interestingly steers clear of defining what is what.
_________________
Keep smiling
Answer:
Interesting reading....
Just a few comments firstly i agree with the team comments! why well simple, have you ever heard of the saying 'jack of all trades master of none', well i believe this is true with BW we need to understand the clear boundaries between us and other areas.
SR is correct and i fall into the same area, as a BW developer you do get involved in all areas from Admin-development-security, but do we need to know server admin and all basis functions, well im unsure and a basic idea is good.
I think one of the biggest issues with BW developers these days is that you need a team of people with both business background and technical, the main section of R3 developers have come from a business background i.e. accountants, where as i believe basis and BW should come from a technical background that coupled with working with key business users who can create reports makes up a good BW team. Thats not saying that many of the best BW developers out there dont come from a business background, but technical knowledge is a real help with BW unlike R3.
thats my rant and thanks for reading.
_________________
life only sucks when you let it get that way!
Answer:
Hello there
I am really happy to see that I am not the only one
I have just realized that there is a big difference between our BW team and R/3 team.
At least in our Firm, thoes people are really organized. For example to get one transport from DEV to PROD I have to go through 3 people. One that approve the request (in our firm). One that makes sure that all the dependencies are in order (in our firm). And the last one who imports the transport (The firm that maintains the servers).
Up here in the BW section we do not have that kind of discipline. The consultant that is busy up to both his ears is also the man who is responsible for coordinationg the transports. Imagine the result
I have found several transports in PROD with the description "DELETE ME"
I guess what I am trying to say is what SR already has written:
(so much for teamwork).
Have a nice day
L2L