How do you effect change

Affect Change or Effect Change – Which is Correct?

When you contact your state representative and convince him or her to vote against a piece of regressive legislation, are you effecting change or affecting change?

The answer is not as simple as it seems—both affect and effect can be used as a verb or a noun. These multiple meanings are the source of the confusion around this common phrase.

What is the Difference Between Affect Change and Effect Change?

In this post, I will compare effect change vs. affect change and use each of these phrases in a sentence that shows how the phrase looks in context.

I will also show you a useful memory tool that makes it simpler to choose either effect change or affect change for your writing.

When to Use Effect Change

What does effect change mean? Effect change is a verb phrase that means to bring about a different state of affairs.

An activist might seek to effect change at a local level if she does not approve of the use of land resources in her hometown, for instance. Similarly, a member of the safety team at a manufacturing plant could seek to effect change in the way his coworkers use dangerous equipment.

Here are some more examples,

Many people want to bring down the government, but it might be more useful and practical to effect change by running for local office.
Everyone can effect change by choosing to recycle or not litter on the streets.
Individual investors can effect change this year on another topic: company policies governing when it should act to recover an executive’s compensation because of corporate wrongdoing. –The New York Times

When to Use Affect Change

What does affect change mean? Affect change is an incorrect version of the phrase effect change.

In most contexts, affect is a verb, while effect is a noun, so it’s easy to see why many writers default to affect in this verb phrase. Still, effect can be used as a verb, where it means to bring about something (like change). Affect can also be used as a noun, like in the phrase positive affect, which is basically technical shorthand for a good mood in social science research.

As you can see from the chart below, which charts affect change vs. effect change over time, effect change is the much more commonly used version of this phrase.

Of course, this makes sense, since effect change is the correct spelling of the phrase. Affect change still appears, although it’s not clear in what contexts writers are using this phrase.

Trick to Remember the Difference

Counterintuitive though it may seem, effect change is the correct version of this phrase. When effect is used as a verb, it means to bring something about. The phrase effect change therefore means to bring something about.

Effect change starts with the letter E, just like the verb elicit. The shared E between these words is your clue that effect change is the correct phrase.

Summary

Is it affect change or effect change? Effect change is a verb phrase that means to bring about change. Affect change is a common mistake based on the normal parts of speech of affect and effect.

To summarize,

Effect change is the correct spelling.
Affect change is an error.

Contents

1 What is the Difference Between Affect Change and Effect Change?
2 When to Use Effect Change
3 When to Use Affect Change
4 Trick to Remember the Difference
5 Summary

Writing Tip 402: “Affect Change” or “Effect Change”

When change is in the air—when you can see it in the clouds, on the streets, or anywhere else—what are you going to do?

Oh, I know, you’ve got this. You’ve mastered “affect” vs. “effect.” You didn’t even need Get a Grip on Your Grammar to teach you the difference between this tricky pair. But then came this moment in your life, and you’re ready to “effect change” in the world (or are you ready to “affect change” in the world)? Uh oh. “Affect Change” or “Effect Change”?

Do you still feel as confident as you did a moment ago?

First, some review:

“Affect” is most commonly a verb meaning “to influence.”
“Effect” is most commonly a noun meaning “a result.”

When you affect something, there is an effect. Simple, right?

But are you bothered that I used “commonly” in both of those definitions? That’s because there are a lot of subtleties to these two words, where they just want to mess with you. Okay, perhaps words don’t actually want to mess with you, but it feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?

I could go deeper here (and have … ahem, Get a Grip…), but let’s get to the crux of today’s conversation.

Is it “Affect Change” or “Effect Change”?

The moment you think of noun versus verb, you might think you have it down. However, here’s the curve-ball:

The correct phrase is “to effect change.” Yes, “effect” with an “e.”

Are you effecting change in your community through your work or your words?

Are you effecting change in your manuscript by delving into your editing?

Are you effecting change among your family and friends by being the role model desperately needed?

No matter how you might be doing it, you’re effecting change. I see the logic of “affecting” here, but it’s simply not the correct answer. English language rule exceptions are in effect again. (See what I did there? In effect? Yep, for something to be “in effect,” it’s another usage of “effect” with an “e.”)

Complicated? It seems so; it’s true. But you’ve got this. Of everything you might feel up against, the English language doesn’t have to be on the list.

Bonus Tip:

Speaking of effecting change, Gandhi is frequently given credit for the quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world. ” Powerful words? Absolutely. Were they actually Gandhi’s? Uh oh, have I made you hesitate again?

This line is actually a paraphrase of his words, close but not quite something he ever said. I know you’ve seen it on memes, bumper stickers, and who knows where else, but just because you see something used doesn’t mean that it’s accurate. It’s as true for grammar and spelling as it is for anything else.

Sign up for my monthly writing and editing email newsletter for more tips like this.

Writing Tip 401: “Cut and Dry” vs. “Cut and Dried” Writing Tip 403: “Rue” vs. “Roux”

Overview of editing feature representations—Help

Available with a Standard or Advanced license.

Editing feature representation geometry
Editing feature representation properties

The appearance of a representation is the result of a representation rule applied to the object's geometry. The editing tools on the Representation toolbar are for editing geometry and representation rule properties - in any combination - to change the appearance of selected feature representations on the map.

Editing feature representation geometry

A feature class representation is defined by one of two types of editing behaviors. In the case of editing a view, either the geometry of the object is changed, which is stored in the Shape field, or a new replacement field is created, in which the changed geometry is written, and the Shape field remains unchanged. It's important to know which edit behavior a feature class inherits because changes you make to a geometry representation can affect other maps if you don't store geometry changes in different fields.

More about geometry editing behavior settings

Because most geometric effects dynamically change the visual shape of an object's representation during drawing, representations can have a shape that does not match the object's spatial geometry. In this regard, changing some properties of the representation rules can change the visual form of the object representation. In this case, the stored information about the geometry of the object will not be changed.

How object representations work with closure option

The Snapping toolbar allows you to snap to features, including feature representations, when editing, measuring, spatially referencing, and selecting. After you override a shape, snapping occurs only on the representation geometry. For example, if you have moved a feature representation, you can snap to the representation's location rather than the feature's geometry. Similarly, if you have converted an object representation to a free representation, you are also snapping to the representation's geometry. Note that view snapping does not guarantee topological correctness in the data when the shape being replaced differs from the geometry of the feature.

If you use the classic editing snapping environment instead of the Snapping toolbar, the editing tools will always snap only on the object's geometry, regardless of whether there are overrides or free representations.

However, neither the Snapping toolbar nor the classic snapping environment allows you to snap to dynamic geometry created by a geometric effect such as offset or marker placement style. In these cases, you can only snap to the object's geometry.

How overridden feature representations respond to Merge and Split operations

Because the Override field stores the overridden feature geometry, you should perform geometry editing procedures such as Split and Merge ( Merge), which will result in new features being created before feature geometry is changed.

Breaking a composite object representation that includes an overridden shape will copy the entire contents of the Override field to the newly created object representations. This means that you may see duplicate parts if you break the object and move its individual pieces.

About splitting line features
About splitting polygon features

When two feature representations that contain shape overrides are merged, only the Override field of the dominant representation is preserved. Results may differ from those expected.

About merging features

Editing feature representation properties

A feature representation is created based on the properties of the corresponding representation rule. These properties can be modified for individual object views during an edit session to change the appearance of the view. These changes are converted into representation rule overrides, stored in the Override field. In order to restore the representation of an object controlled by the properties specified in the representation rule, simply remove the override.

Only the properties of geometric effects, as well as symbolic layers, represented in a representation rule can be changed; the representation rule itself cannot be changed based on the feature topology. You cannot add or remove geometric effects or character layers to a representation rule that controls the representation of a single object, nor can you change the type of geometric effect present in a representation rule until you convert it to a free representation.

All representation rule properties that are associated with geometric effects and symbol layers can be interactively modified using the representation editing tools or by changing values in the Representation Properties and Attributes dialog boxes.

About the Representation Properties window
About modifying representation properties

Presentations / SAPLAND / SAPLand - SAP Solution World

How to work steadily and without risks in an IT environment

My name is Markus Alexander Funke, I work for SAP Active Global Support in the EMEA region and am currently developing the SAP Mission Control Center support system.

Today's topic concerns risks, including the risks of creating a low-quality SAP system. If you develop your SAP system properly, use a quality product, then you should increase the value of your business twice a year. I will tell you how this can be achieved.

Application Lifecycle Management

Application lifecycle management is an IT process that supports process deployment requirements. In this process, there are four main areas that must work stably and without risks in the IT environment.

First, IT service management. When we talk about service management, about managing IT services, we are talking about a key function that supports not only Help Desk, but also other systems.

Incident and problem management is an integrated part of ITIL Desk, as is service management. This way, as a result of an incident, you will be able to generate a change request. Ultimately, once a change request is created, it must be designed, documented, tested, and deployed properly and thoroughly.
Accordingly, we must be able to manage the testing of implementations at a certain point in time. In order to manage this process, we are building a factory - this is also terminology, "SAP-factory".

I am a chemist, candidate of sciences. And while I worked at chemical plants, it never occurred to anyone to change the process when the system was working. If we apply the same standards to IT, for example, in drug factories, power plants, this does not carry risks - we thus create a stable business and, of course, not just manage incidents. In particular, we see what is the way to expand the necessary processes as required by the business. For example, there are new requirements, new roles, things that need to be implemented in a week, in two weeks in order for the business to be satisfied, these are considered the same types of process. Using SAP terminology, in this context we are talking about incidents that we manage.

Large factory management

Urgent changes are always something related to an incident, with improvements and extensions, small releases. The world does not stand still, it develops: we buy companies, integrate new business specializations that should be included in the IT landscape. It needs to be managed, and on a completely different level. This is what is called IT project management and portfolio management. Ultimately, when you manage a large project, you make small changes or minor improvements, and when you test, you use the same process. There are three main types of processes, but the way they are implemented is very important.

Ultimately, the result is a working solution that needs to be tracked by monitoring it. Therefore, part of application lifecycle management is technical monitoring. This is the management of technical parameters.

Sometimes it is necessary to trace: if there are flaws in any process, IT managers must be able to find out. The shipment can't be made and it can be tracked in the system before the business representatives call the company and say: "You know, I have 700-800 orders here that cannot be fulfilled in any way, help me." This needs to be determined in advance, to be prepared for such events.

Business process, monitoring, analytics and technical component, monitoring of the user experience system - in SAP terminology is defined as the management of a large factory. In essence, this is application lifecycle management.

Help Desk as a work product

SAP offers a central SAP Solution Manager tool that can support all four key processes. Compared to other products, SAP Solution Manager is already a working product, you can use the Help Desk for monitoring. At the same time, the question arises: what key processes should the company launch in the first place, what processes should be invested in? Full technical control over the implementation of changes and testing - you need to invest in them.

Usually a large number of companies have dedicated help desks and support services. Therefore, the second step should be the implementation of these tools, although this is usually never done. And yet, when this part is stable, change starts from there. Project management and portfolio management is important, but it depends on how they will be implemented. Usually this is the last thing that is implemented, because the thing is very complex, complex, it needs to be managed with a lot of investments, it requires costs.

So, I presented the essence of IT application lifecycle management and integrated IT management.

What business does not want

By the way, we interviewed customers a year and a half ago, and just a technical upgrade is exactly what the business wants to avoid. No need to make technical changes, involving business in this matter. This is the first. The second thing that became clear is that parallel changes cause zero effect. In other words, we should not create additional problems, reveal hidden problems later.

Also, many clients I've spoken to in recent years have complained that change requires a lot of effort. For example, someone is working on a change and it is unknown what the side effects will be. This will most likely require a full regression test, which can end up costing a lot of effort.

Clients also complain about technical downtime, that the system is technically unavailable from time to time, and it is impossible to use it. There are 6-7 time zones in Russia, all of them have production facilities. For example, in Moscow it’s night, downtime, and in Vladivostok it’s day, everyone works. Therefore, upgrades must be planned correctly, and this is quite difficult to do.

Now we will talk about increasing value, how to achieve it, what is usually done and in what sequence. Here is the logical sequence of steps to follow. It all starts, of course, with the technological level. It defines the release, changes, structure. And here you can follow the best practices of SAP.

How will this further affect the landscape? The landscape creates other problems, because you need to confirm changes and manage them in parallel. Three things make IT deployments 80% safer than usual, based on our best practices and experience.

There are side topics, but testing is not one of them, because as a result you have to do an analysis of the consequences, use this tool for testing. It would also be nice to automate key business processes - whenever changes are made, you can proactively test them.

Need a change for the better

Consider the first component of the strategy. This is a release strategy. Companies often have a release strategy. The only question is how good it is.

SAP recommends organizing it as follows. Typically, a release strategy involves large innovation cycles. A project is being implemented, this project is brought into production at least twice a year. Many clients in Western Europe have to make changes to the project every four months, that is, two value releases per year.

The minimum requirement is a change for the better twice a year. But in parallel with this, there are additional small cycles of small releases of continuous improvement. This is perhaps the essence of the topic. In general, in a good, quality IT organization, it is possible to implement improvement projects at least twice a year, and to introduce small changes to the system once a week.

What does it mean? If a company does not have a release strategy, but there are a lot of projects that are implemented only when they are ready, the situation can look confusing. This creates problems. If you do not have clear dates for the implementation of projects, a very difficult situation arises that can lead to forced regression testing. If you do this, change can affect the organization, whether big or small.

If you implement many projects in parallel, which often happens, this situation often occurs, the so-called development downgrade occurs, when the same object is affected in several cases, and you need to understand what is happening in order to make the right decisions. It is difficult in terms of technology, technology.

So try to optimize, make projects more efficient, organize them better, and keep them in sync at startup. This is the first recommendation. Here, by the way, it does not matter what tools you use, this does not apply to application lifecycle management, but only to many years of experience in managing IT projects.

We see what we have already observed - a request for a change, its implementation. The release calendar might look something like this. Break fixes when ready, small fixes on D-day, once or twice a week. Big releases will require downtime. You saw in the demo that for a break fix, we chose an urgent change as an example. This was done without any interruption of the operation. For a small release, you will choose one status, for a major release, another. This will define all the logic, and in the configuration you will be able to determine that urgent changes always have a priority, they are implemented in production after testing. This is the logic behind our demonstration. This is a slide that shows the ideal situation.

Why do we still recommend doing this? The fact is that for many years customers have been complaining that we are very slow in developing changes in SAP. There has always been a question: “When will this change come out?” Three years later in Expansion Pack 8. Previously, there was a rule that SAP implemented extensions and updates that way. In our new HANA platform, this is no longer the case. For more than a year and a half, SAP has been implementing functional extensions and improvements with support packages, offering them more than once every three years, but much more often, our practice of this kind is changing. We used to innovate slowly. Why? Because many customers are using older releases. And it is good that we have changed our attitude to this situation. Let's assume that you want to implement parallel projects with actual days of implementation, launch. These are changes in the organization that are not directly related to the tool. But they, one way or another, will affect the system landscape. The company will have to identify at least a second system for development. There will be a greater level of complexity in management.

You need a second system

The question usually arises: why do we need a second development system? The fact is that when you are doing upgrades, changing releases, development systems are not synchronized. You cannot implement flexible changes, pro-innovations and so on. Having a second system, you, along with the upgrade, will be able to work and implement such changes in production.

However, this all entails the following problem - in two development systems, we cannot move from one system to another, transport changes between two stages of releases. And if you need to deal with changes on time, you will definitely need a second development system. And if you do not have automated tools to implement these changes from one system to another, you will not be able to cope with these changes in any way. Therefore, many are afraid to do this, work with Excel, try to develop a certain sequence and other workarounds, while many of the changes have to be implemented manually in another system, which is very difficult and unpleasant.

So if you want to quickly implement changes, you definitely need a second development system. This will help solve the problem of implementing changes. Such a system should work in order to identify conflicts in the right order. If you do it manually, IT will quickly "overheat", which will cause big problems for the business.
We now have a lot of test systems and ways to implement a second test system. Mercedes-Benz or Porsche can be created in the testing system, it will be very elegant and cool, but it will cost the same money as Mercedes and Porsche themselves. Therefore, many choose more optimal solutions with second systems only for business-critical tasks.

If you are constantly implementing projects, this is a difficult option. So if a CTO comes to a CFO and says, "I need a more complex hardware and software landscape," he's right. If you calculate the benefits and costs, you can see that this person knows how to implement changes in an automated way. As a result of the changes, the total cost of operating the system will be lower, because all the investments in the hardware and software complex will pay off in order to make the operation much more efficient and introduce it all without a lot of problems in production. We must organize the system in such a way as to properly manage change.

Downgrade and other problems

What is the most common major concurrent development problem? This is downgrade. For example, the project lasts a long time. Initial changes are made, urgent changes, then the project goes into production, the next release begins. Then comes the fix and everything breaks.

How to solve this problem? I believe that there is a very simple way out: to postpone the second change for some time after the implementation of the first. Of course, this does not quite correspond to the concept of “two releases of value per year”, as you understand, the process will slow down a lot. But this method is an alternative solution to the problem, many companies resort to it.

From a purely logical point of view, it is necessary to use some kind of detection mechanism that will find conflicts and can help avoid them automatically. There is such an opportunity, it is already working and has been tested on a thousand clients. It's called ChaRM: Retrofit and exists to manage changes at a technical level, identify and resolve conflicts. Its priority is the main, the highest. With the combination of Downgrade Protection and ChaRM: Retrofit you will be able to solve 90% of conflicts that occur in the implementation of projects in an inconsistent manner.

An example can be given in this context. Changes are made to the innovation report. Synchronization tends to cause the most problems, and it usually has to be done manually - someone has to compare the two systems. This is not very reliable, this way is a source of errors. However, this process can be automated up to 90%. This is a very good result because it helps to manage technical changes very effectively.

For example, one American company from my practice, which employs Global HR, successfully used this approach. There are constant changes in this system, because the company is present in 90 countries, legal changes constantly occur. In this regard, the system needs to be updated, kept in the most up-to-date form. The company regularly changes payrolls and other documents. 20,000 transports need to be organized in order to renew the landscape and comply with all legal and legislative requirements. About 18 thousand transports needed to be fully automated.

It was very easy to do this. The company considered that they saved about 1.5 thousand man-days, in terms of money this is a very significant amount. So this is a good way to save money if you do the process every day. In capacious long projects, this often saves a lot of money. Even companies that sell 50-60-200 transports per week can reduce their costs for these purposes to a minimum.

It is also necessary to mention one more, extremely important topic. This is a technical downtime. Over the past two years, SAP has significantly improved its upgrade options. The technical downtime of upgrades has decreased significantly. In almost every Use Case, we have improved functionality that reduces technical unavailability, update downtime to one or two hours. Business downtime can be done even less. For large companies, such as the automotive industry, this is true.

A few words about the proactive implementation of HP expansion packs. When planning an upgrade and applying an Enhancement Package, you should be clear about the changes before you install the Enhancement Package.

A feature has been added to Solution Manager called the EHP Scope and Effort Analyzer. It uses the same logic as mentioned earlier, only in a proactive way. The idea is that all technical data will be in the system, after which a technical estimate will be drawn up. SAP will do a technical analysis and you will get the result, you will be able to identify the transactions that will be affected. Or, for example, if you use client code, custom code, you can determine which objects have changed. In this case, you will have a very good chance of predicting the mechanism for preventing the impact of these changes on the system, even before you start the first transport.

There are other companies that also offer this service. Yes. But SAP offers the best functionality as part of the standard extension, support. Therefore, you can resort to our services, think, consider what it promises you, what benefits. It is, above all, adherence to standard practices and procedures. This has been asked of us for many years now - to use a special analysis tool that will determine the impact and consequences of changes at the beginning. We made it - this is the EHP Scope and Effort Analyzer.

The next question is how to organize testing. First of all, you need to understand that we offer a variety of testing tools available. This is, in particular, a magic tool, a BPCA tool that can be used in two ways: technically and in risk analysis.

Key question: How does SAP support testing that is done in an integrated way? We developed the following scenario: there is documentation of business processes. In the ideal scenario, Business Process Change Analyzer helped us, and we studied what testing tools can be used here. This is Test Workbench. We used automated methods for solving the problem.

If you don't already have test management tools, you don't have to buy them from a third party because Test Manager in SAP Solution Manager is provided as part of the maintenance program.
If you are running HP Quality Center or Rational Software, these solutions can be integrated. If you are using the SAP platform, it is better to stay on it. The fact is that SAP Solution Manager is compatible with SAP Workbench and Quality Center.
To date, there is also the possibility to integrate third-party manufacturers into our solutions. Business Process Change Analyzer is the tool that determines the side effects of such integrations and avoids problems. So it's probably good for these reasons to use HP Quality Center.

No proper structure IT processes? Problem solved

There is another topic that I would like to highlight. This topic tends to attract the most attention. If you have been creating your own system for many years, decades, then naturally your own documentation process is outdated and it will be very difficult for you to use graphical things that allow you to make good visualizations. The difficulty will also be the creation of convenient tools for both the user and the developer, the ability to test the configuration, and so on.

However, do not be afraid that you do not have the correct structure of IT processes. First, BPCA functions can be used without such a structure. Now there are options and ways to quickly, although not too cleanly, let's say, define the transactions of the system, map them, place them in a standard SAP structure.

It may not be 100% accurate, but this is just the beginning. Technical sheet, estimate - this is what is created using the available data in a semi-automatic mode. The only thing to do if there is no such structure is to run a couple of jobs in order to start such a process.

Second. Many companies are afraid of re-documentation, it seems to them that everything will have to be re-documented. Typically, ERP systems use about 150-170 thousand active transactions. Less than 10%, probably. On average, their number is about 200-300 thousand. Business says they use everything, and yet they don't use everything.

All this can be known. Using Solution Manager, perform an analysis of the situation. Its result will give a true answer to the question of how many va01 are executed per day, how many versions of va01 exist, how much XYZ is used per day. This is part of the Solution Manager functionality.

In a standard ERP system, the commonly used number of transactions and realized codes is between 2 and 3 thousand. However, there are 200 or more. 100 or 200 transactions make up 90% of the total transaction volume. This means that the "heavy use" of the system begins when 100 to 200 transactions are used.

If you want to organize normal test management, create correct business documentation, pay attention to these 100-200 transactions, because they carry 10-15 end-to-end processes in one or two versions. If you pull up the business documentation, use the Solution Manager, learn these 10-15 end-to-end processes, use the structure for test management, it can be discussed with the business owner and create a complex structure. You should start with the things that are most relevant.

Unfortunately, in this case, you will not be able to reach all 2 or 3 thousand, but this can be done in the next iteration. In about a year and a half, you will collect about 90% of the necessary documentation, just by doing this work regularly.

At the same time, when starting the process of re-documentation, there is no need to separate it into a huge separate project, try to do everything quickly and immediately. You can do this in another way, using the capabilities of the system in order to determine what the company has a real number of transactions: 200, 100 or 2000, 3000. Having identified the key processes, they need to be placed in the structure. The number of transactions that are usually automated is about 200. Complex clients have 50-100 transactions automated. If you run them and test for changes, the impact of changes, that's where the problems arise, because these transactions should always work. And even if one transaction that invests 90%, will not work, there will be problems, the business will not be able to work. Therefore, these things must always be taken into account.

Now the question is: how to achieve all this? With Two Value Releases Per Year. As already mentioned, you need to plan for two improvements and value increases per year. If many processes are developed in parallel, make a second development system, use Retrofit functions to control changes, avoid conflicts between process projects.

Only important things should be tested, it is recommended to use the Business Process Change Analyzer functionality in order to identify all third-party side effects.

Automate regression testing. This topic is complex, but it is quite possible to cope with it if you do not increase the number of transactions beyond the optimal level for you, for example, 50%. Only key business processes need to be affected.

Of course, the redocumentation that has already been mentioned is a rather difficult thing, so if you are not thinking of starting to use it, you can just carefully study the statistics. Statistics will be based on data that is actually used. This will show how best to perform the impact analysis.

Already today you can enable downgrade protection, switch to a dual landscape, implement Retrofit. in such a logical sequence. SAP has the knowledge and all the necessary tools to manage an IT organization. We can help you with all of this.

MARKUS_ALEXANDER FANKE
SAP AG

Dr. Markus-Alexander Fanke is part of the Management Team at SAP Active Global Support. As Program Director, Markus is helping to build the new SAP Support Core, EMEA MCC (Mission Control Center), leading the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) team. Since joining SAP in 2001, Markus has successfully established SAP Active Global Support offices in several emerging markets such as South Africa and the Middle East.

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