Impact Assessment

Impact assessment(IA) is the process of identifying the future consequences of a current or proposed action.A Technical Design Authority needs to carry out IA every time there is a change or a new project landing into the BI system. It is a very challenging job as it really test your level of understanding, experience and thoughts. It's paper work but when we actually put our mind into the piece of work, good result is achieved in term of notifying the project team on the possible bugs resulted from the solutioning or simply pin point out mistakes in design and at the same time ensure the design adheres to the company standard guideline such as infoobjects,naming convention and architecture.

This document on impact assessment based on ITIL is worth a read.

Tips on IA for BI environment..
Give emphasis on the following when reviewing the blueprint:
1.Shared Objects

• Infoobjects
• Datasource
• Hierarchy
  
• Authorization objects
• Unit of measure conversion
• Currency exchange rate

2. Authorization

• Authorization objects
• Authorization DSO

3. Standards

• Global/regional infoobjects
• Projects/System infoarea
• Naming convention

4. Batch Schedule

• Master data and transactional data load not already exist in current system
• Availability of windows from R/3 for extraction and work process slots for extraction in BI

5. Housekeeping

• Data retention for PSA
• Data retention in reporting cube (consider factors like the needs of backposting and reload)
• Is CML (Corporate Memory Layer) used
• Compression and aggregates

6. Flat files

• Define ownership and frequency of load
• Define wheather upload of data is via FTP/Webdynpro interface or IP
• If FTP,define standard SAP directory and ftp method that does not violate security policy

7. Any potential data reload and methods to reload wrongly defined(mapped) data, eg. deletion by request or selective deletion depending on the key figure mode is in overwrite or summation.