Where Does Agile Fit in SAP Projects?

By |November 12th, 2012|

After offering insight based on my personal experiences around "Agile Project Methods for SAP ERP Projects?" I wanted to highlight a few areas where Agile does work: Design sessions Development efforts (i.e. coding) Data conversions Once you begin to move beyond these areas, you quickly encounter dependent workstreams that need much more coordination. Those additional dependencies make it difficult to apply Agile methods. While Agile tends to emphasize the one-week to one-month "sprint," I woul [...]

The SAP User Experience

By |April 9th, 2012|

Over a decade ago SAP embarked on a journey to revamp their outdated user interface.  Enter "nJoy" SAP with all of the new "N" transactions.  But it has been over a decade now and other than some nice refinements to the GUI not much has changed.  A decade in the technology space is like a century in other areas.  Isn't it time to take a hard look at the application suite again? So you have the cute "Netweaver Business Client" but there hasn't been a lot done to chan [...]

More SAP Project Leadership Tips for Managing Conflict

By |November 28th, 2011|

If you are determined to gain and then maintain SAP project momentum, you will see stress. Part of the requirement for momentum includes asking people to reach for stretch goals that can challenge (and deepen) their capabilities, but also cause tension and even conflict. One author says conflict is "a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions and in which each party wishes to occupy a position which is incompatible with the wish [...]

5 More Leadership Tips for Successful SAP Project Management

By |November 21st, 2011|

Of the previous five tips I reviewed last week, the first three are all related to project momentum. Let's look at a key to maintaining that momentum while also reducing the impediments on your SAP project. One SAP critical success factor for maintaining project momentum requires SAP project management that is fully integrated in the day-to-day project activities. This hands-on approach to project management is one of the SAP best practices for overall project success. The tools, resources, and [...]

Where Does SAP Offshore Development Make Sense?

By |October 10th, 2011|

If you are capable of providing detailed design specs without any deviation or thought required, offshore development is a great option. The instant your SAP design requires a measure of experience and insight to make judgment calls, or to look for data or processing that is not explicitly spelled out in detail, you are headed for huge hidden costs. The level of detailed spec design work by SAP functional consultants merely shifts the development time and costs to the higher-priced resources th [...]

Hidden SAP Offshore Development Costs

By |October 3rd, 2011|

My experience with SAP offshore developers is that no matter how detailed your spec, their lack of experience with standard SAP transactions and functionality prevents them from properly testing their own creations. Their results are more than just full of bugs; oftentimes, the system crashes when attempting to do even basic testing. Repeat testing by expensive functional resources happens so frequently and consumes so much hidden time from parallel project activities that entire project timeli [...]