NetWeaver-based Application for SAP Consulting V 2.0

Kreuz, Stand: 14.04.2010

Customer and partner SAP Deutschland AG & Co. KG NetWeaver SAP Consulting Torben Rasche Hasso-Plattner Ring 7 69190 Walldorf Tel.: +49 (0) 151 - 16810454 Fax: +49 (0) 62 27 78 - 47831 E-Mail: torben.rasche@sap.com Web: www.sap.com

Hochschule Heilbronn Prof. Dr. Detlef Kreuz Studiengang Electronic Business Max-Planck-Str. 39 D-74081 Heilbronn Tel.: +49 (0) 7131 504 450 Fax: +49 (0) 7131 252470 E-Mail: kreuz@hs-heilbronn.de Web: www.hs-heilbronn.de/eb

Thomas Adelsberger, Dominik Khan, Detlev Sandel (SAP), Matthias Kopp, Sebastian Kübler, Eray Özmü, Christoph Maaß, Torben Rasche (SAP), Prof. Dr. Detlef Kreuz

Screenshot of room booking application in version 2. It shows the calendar view with options to edit assistants, departments, equipment, rooms and to start a series of booking.

Students of the Bachelor study course Electronic Business developed an applica-tion in collaboration with SAP Deutschland AG und Co. KG. It is based on NetWeaver CE to manage and book rooms. The goal was to replace the manual reservation of rooms/equipment with a web-based solu-tion.

Initial situation At the moment rooms at SAP are manually ma-naged by team assistants. Consultants ask for a room and equipment on a specific date and the team assistant checks in a local Microsoft Excel file, if there is a room available. Depending on the avail-ability consultants get an approval, a rejection and/or a proposal for a new time or room. It is evi-dent that this process is inefficient. Among high ma-nual workload for the team assistants, consultants depend on team assistants. There is already a ver-sion 1 of a room booking application developed by last terms students. Version 1 of the software is a web-based solution offering a self-service environ-ment for consultants to simplify the room booking process. They can do the main steps of a booking, like receiving an overview of all rooms, selecting available rooms and equipment and booking the room themselves. Assistants are not involved in booking tasks and therefore are cleared of charge but they are still able to process a booking request on behalf of the consultants. Version 1 is only in English language. Since this software is not market-ready, it is not yet in use.

Goals and objectives The main objective was to improve this web-based solution offering a self-service environment to the consultants and to simplify the room booking process. The project team wanted to internationalize and improve the interface, fix known bugs and add features, which enable users to create series of bookings and book equipment.

Used technologies The tool is completely based on SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (NW CE). The business logic is developed in Java (JEE5) and the user inter-face in SAP's standard UI technology Web Dynpro (WD) Java.

Project organization Similar to a real business project, every team mem-ber worked in at least one role. The project was planned with these roles: Project Manager: Managing head of the whole

project. The PM had to manage the project, create and assign work packages, monitor re-sults and project risks. In addition the PM was in charge of the tasks of product management and architecture: Defining the requirement specifica-tion and modeling the software architecture in cooperation with stakeholders.

Developer business logic: Programmers of business logic were in charge of creating me-thods and functions handling information ex-change between database and user interface. These methods are called business logic.

Developer user interface (UI): The UI develop-er used the objects provided by the business log-ic and built the user interface with Web Dynpro and Java on the basis of NW CE.

Administrator and Tester: The administrator had to monitor and maintain the development environment. The testers had to provide test cases for different test phases and to coordinate tests and manage the issues.

Project phases The project was divided in different phases following the “feature driven development model“, consisting of the following: Develop an overall model: Analyzing version 1

of the SAP room booking application was started. Also the bug list und feature requests from SAP were taken into consideration.

Build a feature list: Depending on these results and SAP‘s features list the new list with features was built and priorities were assigned to them. The ones with the highest priority and suitable to the project team’s time limit were selected.

Plan by feature: Then the features were planned by assigning responsible team members for each feature and a time schedule for the rea-lization was set up.

Design by feature: Methods, parameters and Value Objects for each View and/or Feature were designed.

Build by feature: In this step the programming work was done. Testing was also integrated here. Any changes or bugs led back to step “de-sign by feature“.

Project results A useful application which can be used in productive environment for a specific team was developed. Through the internationalization it can be extended to more teams worldwide. Other project teams can follow up on version 2.0 and enrich the application with more features based on the delivered code and documentation.

Conclusion The cooperation with SAP was a real challenge for all team members. New technologies, an own SAP wording and a new environment – the students had the chance and the exercise to get deeply in touch with one of the biggest software vendors. For all team members, it was important to deal with current technologies and manage the problems of a real project. To hit the goals, all stakeholders of the project had to work together. Only through a conti-nuous integration of the customer, the students could achieve the expectations and objectives. They also could improve their presentation and English skills through several weekly meeting calls.