Hi John,
In my opinion/experience, recommendation varies from customer to customer and scenario basis and can't be straight forward.
Moreover whatever Rishav has suggested is only one applicable solution and we do have other alternative but depending upon the scenario and its usage along with applicability.
e.g. CENTRAL CTS is the new recommendation but unfortunately again it has technical limitations like we can't use it for very old R/3 etc systems etc
another issue is if you have 2 system landscape for one landscape and 3 system landscape for another then also Central CTS can't manage it today(later possible in 7.2)
But with central CTS DGP CSOL you get a very much flexible automated Change Management process than a simple transport tool offered by other vendors. also like I have shared below to your other thread, we do have status dependent import mechanism providing flexibility further.
Re: ChaRM: Normal Change Production import issue with 4 tier landscape
Secondly you can also go for Central CTS based Quality Gate Management incase ChaRM process is too complex for your case
so as said already it is not a simple way of suggesting to use ABC.... but actually the application of right approach with correct implementation for any customer aligned to its Change process(not tool)
Hope this helps
Thanks
Prakhar