Managing changes
A good friend of mine thought I should post some thoughts about best practices; after giving it some thought, I figured I would write a little about managing configuration changes in E-Sourcing and CLM.
Many of you probably know that E-Sourcing provides options when it comes to making configuration changes and applying them to development, staging, and production instances. Some people choose to make the configurations using the XLS workbook capabilities, while others make the majority of the changes via the user interface. In either case, it is still important to consider how these changes should be moved to other instances of the application.
Some customers I work with are particularly rigorous about ensuring all changes are made in a development system, tested in a staging system, and carefully migrated to the production system. At the other end of the spectrum, I have also seen some customers be more aggressive and make configuration changes directly in the production instance. Where are you in this spectrum? Has your process worked well for you?
When I work with customers, I tend to prefer the more rigorous approach to change management. I think it is important that configuration changes are thoroughly tested and validated. I like this to be done in the development system, then migrated to the production system at the appropriate time - I think an evening or weekend is best to allow for further validation testing in those systems.
Unfortunately, applying this rigor really requires careful coordination, particularly if multiple people are working on the changes. E-Sourcing does not provide the necessary tools to easily identify “what has changed” and “has it been migrated to production”. As a result, those people making the changes need to carefully record each of the changes (I usually create a spreadsheet enumerating each change) and then create an export with those items. When done carefully and diligently, this works really well. It also helps set the next person making changes up for success - that person doesn’t need to figure out which system has the correct set of configurations; they can follow the same process.
Regardless of whether you choose to make your changes using an XLS workbook or via the E-Sourcing user interface, I would encourage you to use the E-Sourcing export data and import data tools as your means to move changes from a development system to a staging and/or production system. These tools are available in the setup area and can be configured to export only specific data elements.
In reality, this topic could have a small book written on it. Nevertheless, I hope it has made you think about how you manage changes and ensure your systems are configured consistently. Good luck!