I recently received a message on LinkedIn sharing a blog post from Andrew Brown posted in September on LinkedIn. The title “Things SAP’s implementation methodology, Activate, doesn’t tell you” caught my attention. I was intrigued to read it to see where we can enhance SAP Activate content that users may be missing. As I read the post, which is a list of great points the PMs need to keep in mind when getting ready for ERP deployment, I was relieved to find that the topics Andrew touches on are all well covered in SAP Activate.
This post augments Andrew’s blog post with specific resources and accelerators available in SAP Activate. Perhaps this blog post will help PMs or project team members embarking on RISE with SAP prepare and utilize the guidance provided by SAP.
Since Andrew’s blog post focuses on ERP deployment, I’ll refer to the resources in SAP Activate for RISE with SAP in the rest of the post. However, these points are equally important if you are deploying GROW with SAP, SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Fieldglass, or any other solution (or a combination). The respective version of SAP Activate in Roadmap Viewer provides guidance for these solutions.
In my post, I'll mirror the sequence of Andrew’s points to connect the two and provide links to additional resources that PMs should consider leveraging. At the end of the post, I’ll add a few more topics that are also critical to consider when it comes to the ERP program like governance of solution design, organizational change management, understanding of a fit-to-standard mindset, and clean core approach.
If you haven't yet, I suggest you read Andrew’s post first, then come back and continue reading here.
Understanding your team's roles, responsibilities, and composition is essential for any leader starting their ERP journey. I recommend that project managers embarking on their SAP deployment review the "Agile Roles and Responsibilities" accelerator, which is found in the "Establish Project Governance" task in SAP Activate. It provides role definitions, a sample project structure, and additional details about team setup. It is one of the most downloaded assets in SAP Activate (after the project schedule and plan accelerators).
I’m not sure which SAP Activate book Andrew refers to when he mentions that planning is covered in just one paragraph because I agree that is not enough. But that is not important for this discussion. (BTW if you want a great SAP Activate book, pre-order the soon-to-be-released 3rd updated edition of our book on SAP PRESS here). Even if you don’t buy the book, planning is very important for the success of your program and SAP Activate provides several resources to help you do just that. We recommend you perform planning on multiple levels.
The highest level is the overall program's planning of key milestones and activities in each phase; think of it like framing the house. The next level is the detailed planning of the activities and their dependencies in detail for each phase. This is usually done iteratively and covers the upcoming phase plus a rough plan for the following phase. The lowest level of planning is the actual planning and execution of the sprints, where the planning is detailed for each functional team, and the team usually has a planning horizon of one or two following sprints.
Planning is critical and there are many dependencies to consider. For example, when is the earliest time your team will receive the sandbox system? Who and when will activate the SAP Best Practices content and prepare for fit-to-standard workshops? Who will prepare data for testing in each sprint? What types of testing will you perform through the project and how will you manage the findings? How are you going to approach data loads over the life of the project? and many more. The goal of Activate is to give you a good starting point to tailor that plan to your organization’s specific needs.
The Project Management workstream in SAP Activate provides detailed guidance and accelerators in 90+ tasks covering the PM activities from the beginning of the project to the go-live and Run phase. You can see the SAP Activate content for RISE with SAP here or use the Roadmap Viewer to access the 20+ variants of SAP Activate for other SAP products here.
Andrew raises good points about the importance of estimating costs. Before you go to cost-level estimates, I recommend focusing on effort estimation as your starting point. Cost estimates will range widely depending on your choice of suppliers, resources, and where you source them from.
In my experience, many PMs delivering SAP projects don’t get to deal too closely with the initial cost estimation of the entire program as that is usually determined through what SAP Activate covers in the Discover phase in which the scope definition drives the cost estimates, typically in the form of a proposal or response to an RFP.
When I managed the PM practice in SAP, most of our 1000+ PM practitioners focused on delivering on these estimates/budgets and project timelines to ensure the projects delivered value and were on time. Only a small number of very experienced PMs were involved in the cost estimates for RFPs.
Absolutely spot on. As I stated above, there are 90+ tasks across the 6 phases of SAP Activate to help you plan, set up, staff, and govern your program, many enriched with accelerators that help you put the controls in place and manage the project efficiently. Check out the set of tasks for your RISE with SAP deployment here and the 100+ PM accelerators here.
When you look through the content, you will see that SAP Activate largely follows the Project Management Institute standards for project management. When it comes to the agile framework, SAP Activate follows the Scrum artifacts and process, which is the most widely adopted agile framework in the industry. There are also resources for customers leveraging the Scaled Agile Framework, like this comprehensive deck explaining how SAFe and Activate work best together.
Absolutely, that's a great point about learning from others, whether that is your SI or other customers. SAP customers find great value in joining and actively participating in the SAP user groups, whether ASUG, DSAG, or other regional and local customers. You may also find value in participating in dedicated advisory councils that SAP runs for various products, services, or industries that you may get invited to through your SAP contacts.
Another option is to follow the experts posting in the SAP Activate community or join the regular webinars SAP delivers to both customers and the partner ecosystem. You can find the SAP Activate community here.
While I agree that data is always on a critical path no matter the solution you are deploying, I would not call it a downfall. You need to plan your data management approach very early and progressively check the quality of the data preparation throughout the project. It is not wise to wait with your data load testing until late in the Realize phase. When it comes to data preparation and loads, we recommend aligning the data loads with the build/test sprints and using these mock data loads to prepare data for various tests that you will be doing in the project. To understand the data management process I recommend reviewing the Data Management work stream and associated accelerators that you can find here.
The other mistake related to data I have seen in some projects is when the customer team takes on the data management ownership without having the right skillset to deliver quality data on time. These projects typically being delayed as the SI experts need to step in late in the project to help finalize the data preparation before the go live. Experienced PM will keep an eye on data management as it is a critical part of project success.
As Andrew recommends, you should start early on this activity. The cutover activities are planned in the Realize phase, where your various teams need to come together to detail all the activities necessary to bring the new system live. You will test your cutover plan in cutover dress rehearsals and fine-tune the plans based on the actual experiences from simulating the cutover before the actual production cutover procedure that is outlined here.
Here are a few other areas that you should, as an experienced PM, consider when planning your ERP deployment journey:
The principle of fit-to-standard is to maximize the reuse of pre-delivered business processes while satisfying your business's unique requirements. As I sometimes need to explain, it is not designed to fit every customer in the SAP Best Practices box, instead it is about the mindset applied to the solution design. Ask users “why will the standard process not work for you?” to drive the use of the standard functionality. There are countless documents and blogs providing details about the planning, preparation, execution, and documentation of the outcomes. This blog post from Andreas Muno is one of the best ones providing a great level of detail and simulation videos showing these workshops. This accelerator will also give you additional details about how you should structure and run your fit-to-standard workshops and how to document the results in a backlog.
PMs will typically focus on traditional ERP program governance and escalation paths which are covered here. It is also important to manage adherence to clean core principles and setup governance for solution design. SAP Activate recommends setting up governance to adopt the solution close to standard (discussed above), and leverage modern extension and integration technologies to tailor the solution to the business. This will enable organizations to innovate faster and stay current with their solution through regular upgrades.
SAP Activate provides guidance for such governance depending on the solution – for example, the Solution Standardization Board setup and focus in the deployment of RISE with SAP will be different from GROW with SAP which provides a lot more guided options for extensibility and integration.
If you are interested in the broader topic of clean core and its governance during the project lifecycle, I recommend you review my earlier blog about the enhancements to SAP Activate specifically addressing the clean core dimensions of business process design, data, extensibility, integration, and operations—check it out here or review this video.
During every ERP deployment, the changes to business processes and standard operating procedures expose end users to a significant amount of change that needs to be properly assessed, planned, communicated, and managed over the course of the program and beyond. It is not only about training the end users, but also about understanding their concerns, level of acceptance, etc. You will find a great framework for managing change in the Solution Adoption work stream or directly when you access the tag Organizational Change Management. Just like for PM topics, there are plenty of accelerators to use to help you organize this area of the project. Additionally, you can follow the OCM learning in SAP Learning here.
Progressively testing the solution is the approach that SAP Activate recommends following as instead of the outdated approach of testing the solution late in the Realize before go-live. I recommend you review the Test Management Guide that you can find in the Testing work stream. This guide introduces you to various types of testing of functionality, data loads, integrated solution, performance, etc., and shows how you apply them during the project lifecycle.
If you want to continue learning about SAP Activate or even get certified, you can leverage the learning journeys for SAP Activate and the respective certification exam. There are several great blog posts on the SAP Activate community from certified PMs about how they prepared for the exam.
Please use comments to this blog post to continue the conversation. Share your experience and feedback. We can learn from each other.
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