Defect repair efficacy in ERP production systems

Abstract

Over time, persistent change may have a considerable effect on the codebases of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Small changes, however, are not always expressions of intentional and incremental transformation. They may result from unplanned but necessary and urgent corrections for repairing undesired functionality that entered the ERP system via previously applied change. Every such repair will affect the performance and prioritization of operational processes and, by extension, influence the business that the system intends to support. We developed a change log data view to assess business impact by classifying repairs into one of two mutually exclusive classes. Repairs are either effective, meaning that the next change delivers the fix, or defective, meaning multiple successive attempts are required to satisfactorily correct the initial erroneous change. Investigating the extent to which both repair types on proprietary codebase customizations affect competence center operational performance, our view delivered two finds. First, change size is a poor indicator for repair resolution efficacy. Second, most repairs appear to be defective suggesting poor codebase change process control. Our data originated from 25 SAP landscapes, representing an average system age of around five years and an average landscape size of 57 ERP system instances.