Best practices for development releases for AX 2012?

This question is answered

I'm an all around AX newbie and have been tasked with coming up with the formal processes and procedures for rolling out development projects into AX 2012.  I am neither a developer nor AX professional so any assistance would be really appreciated even if it's just steering me in the right direction.  What do you even call such processes?  Release change management?  Development change workflow?  I have tried researching the topic, but I'm starting to be convinced that I'm not even looking in the right places.

To break it down, these are the kinds of questions I need to answer.  Which process do YOU follow from the start to finish of a project?

  • How do you manage and document projects?  Every project will be required to have some sort of knowledge-base which explicitly explains what changes were made and why.  This documentation will be necessary for auditors.
  • Where do you store this documentation?  SharePoint?  Some other collaboration site?
  • How and where do you document your AX projects?

Additional info
We have 3 AX environments.  Development, Testing, and Production.  Needless to say, the changes start from development, proceed to testing, then end in production.  The issue is how these processes are managed and documented!

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help!

Verified Answer
  • This paper might be a good reference:

    Deploying Customizations Across Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Environments White Paper for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

    mbs.microsoft.com/.../ax2012_deployingcustomizationswhitepaper.htm

    Janet

  • Microsoft has published SureStep which is the basis they want all partners and customers to use for their implementations. Besides the implementation details such as configuration etc, it also gives out guidelines for customizations.

    SureStep is a methodology, but to your specific needs it also contains templates for documents including FDD and TDD (functional design document and technical design document) which are used to describe, design and document customizations to your system.

    SureStep is also a tool that you can both install locally or use the hosted solution from Microsoft, to store and track these documents. Typically SharePoint is used by a lot of MS partners.

    Besides the documenting there is also the technical aspect, where for good practice you'd want to use some version control system. Microsoft's own system, and my personal favorite, is called Team Foundation Server. This allows you to control and track what ACTUAL code changes are being made, by whom, and when.

    The whole process of documenting, coding and deploying in the software development world (not specifically AX) is called "Application Lifecycle Management" (or ALM for short). That's a good term to serarch for on your favorite search engine.

All Replies
  • This paper might be a good reference:

    Deploying Customizations Across Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Environments White Paper for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

    mbs.microsoft.com/.../ax2012_deployingcustomizationswhitepaper.htm

    Janet

  • That's the word I'm looking for... "customizations"!  Will check it out, thank you!

    I'm still be curious to hear how other real-world organizations manage this.

  • Yes, we post functional design documents (which may include technical notes) to SharePoint.

    HTH

    Janet

  • Microsoft has published SureStep which is the basis they want all partners and customers to use for their implementations. Besides the implementation details such as configuration etc, it also gives out guidelines for customizations.

    SureStep is a methodology, but to your specific needs it also contains templates for documents including FDD and TDD (functional design document and technical design document) which are used to describe, design and document customizations to your system.

    SureStep is also a tool that you can both install locally or use the hosted solution from Microsoft, to store and track these documents. Typically SharePoint is used by a lot of MS partners.

    Besides the documenting there is also the technical aspect, where for good practice you'd want to use some version control system. Microsoft's own system, and my personal favorite, is called Team Foundation Server. This allows you to control and track what ACTUAL code changes are being made, by whom, and when.

    The whole process of documenting, coding and deploying in the software development world (not specifically AX) is called "Application Lifecycle Management" (or ALM for short). That's a good term to serarch for on your favorite search engine.