ALM Productions Lists

Hi All,

This seems a basic question but I would really appreciate your collective inputs. What would be the implications if I integrate ALM on our current models without tagging lists as productions lists? Some formulas have direct references to lists which are not allowed when lists are set as production lists. Editing the formulas to comply is not on the table as there are many computations that has direct references.

Would really appreciate your help as I'm new to Anaplan as well.

Edit: To add to my previous inquiry, what are key indicators to consider if we would benefit or not from Anaplan ALM given our current situation.

Thanks in advance!

Jad

Accepted answers

Jitendra.Vishnolia

Hi @CommunityMember88511 ,

I'll recommend you to go through https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Best-Practices/Setting-production-lists/ta-p/19284 where in to take care of direct reference you'll find two options

(Option 1) Add List Selections module to be used in LOOKUPs for 1:1 mappings ,and
(Option 2) Modeling for complex logic and many to many relationship

Hope it Helps.

Thanks

LipChean_Soh

Hi,

ALM should be implemented as part of every Anaplan implementation, the benefits are obvious:

1. There'll be segregation of duties between model builders and business users.

2. Model builders can build freely in Dev without fear of a massive roll back.

3. Business users won't suffer massive roll back in the middle of a budget cycle.

Having said the above, whether a List should be a Production or Structural list comes down to whether a List member is to be added during run time/ production or added through ALM.

In most cases, it's quite clear whether a list is Production or Structural. Production List members are created in Source System or by business users during Production, whereas Structural List members are more slowly changing or fixed, and we can rely on Model Builders to add in Dev and 'Compare & Sync'.

However if you are not sure whether a list is Production or Structural, it's best to leave it as Structural first, because changing a list from Structural to Production in the future will retain the list members in your production model; however if you change a list from Production to Structural in the future, then your production model will have the same lists as your Dev model (which in most case is a small list of dummy members for testing members). As a result you'll lose data in Production model.

To answer your question, once you know a list is supposed to be Production List, you should start to plan the formula change from SELECT to LOOKUP. Yes it'll require some effort now, but it's necessary because properly implemented Data Hubs and ALM are crucial elements to achieving Connected Planning.

Thanks,

LipChean

DavidSmith

@CommunityMember88511

As @LipChean_Soh and @Jitendra.Vishnolia have outlined, it is nearly always possible to re-engineer the formulas to avoid SELECT. Along with the previous article posted, this is another good read:

https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Best-Practices/Production-lists-and-ragged-hierarchies-logic/tac-p/37713

I would just add that until you do that, any changes to the lists will need to be promoted via a Synchronise. Once the production model is in Deployed mode, you should never take it out!!

I hope that helps

David

All comments

Jitendra.Vishnolia

Hi @CommunityMember88511 ,

I'll recommend you to go through https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Best-Practices/Setting-production-lists/ta-p/19284 where in to take care of direct reference you'll find two options

(Option 1) Add List Selections module to be used in LOOKUPs for 1:1 mappings ,and
(Option 2) Modeling for complex logic and many to many relationship

Hope it Helps.

Thanks

LipChean_Soh

Hi,

ALM should be implemented as part of every Anaplan implementation, the benefits are obvious:

1. There'll be segregation of duties between model builders and business users.

2. Model builders can build freely in Dev without fear of a massive roll back.

3. Business users won't suffer massive roll back in the middle of a budget cycle.

Having said the above, whether a List should be a Production or Structural list comes down to whether a List member is to be added during run time/ production or added through ALM.

Thanks,

LipChean

CommunityMember88511

Hi @LipChean_Soh,

Thank you for this thorough explanation. I now understand how ALM would benefit us specially in the future to take into account improvements and expansions. So what i'lI do is check all the lists of the models and tag the production lists being used then change the formulas that has direct references into something dynamic. This will take time but I understand now how crucial this is.

Thanks again for the prompt response!

DavidSmith

@CommunityMember88511

As @LipChean_Soh and @Jitendra.Vishnolia have outlined, it is nearly always possible to re-engineer the formulas to avoid SELECT. Along with the previous article posted, this is another good read:

https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Best-Practices/Production-lists-and-ragged-hierarchies-logic/tac-p/37713

I would just add that until you do that, any changes to the lists will need to be promoted via a Synchronise. Once the production model is in Deployed mode, you should never take it out!!

I hope that helps

David

CommunityMember88511

@LipChean_Soh @Jitendra.Vishnolia @DavidSmith

Thank you David for this. I will add these to my review as well. Yes I see now how I can implement this properly to remove hard references.

Thank you all for your help! Greatly appreciated. I will reference all of your points and links for my upcoming presentation for this.

Kind regards,

Jad

scbaker

@LipChean_Soh - thank you for this post; I found was extremely useful and easy to follow.

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