SAP Project Management Consulting Clichés
There’s an old saying (aren’t they all old?) that instructs you to avoid clichés like the plague. SAP has generated its own set of overworked buzzword terminology and has an eco-viral-collective that churns out more and more each day. I can hardly keep up with the acronyms. Over the years I’ve accumulated three favorites of my own that I’d like to share. The aim here is not to kill off the clichés, instead it is to suggest ways to head them off before you use one and have clients rolling their eyes at you–Or at least have a quick follow up so that the cliché actually has some value.
The Art of Writing an SAP Functional Specification
The Art of Writing a Functional Specification Document
Overview
I am currently working on an SAP implementation project that is just starting its realization phase. One of my first tasks, as a member of the technical implementation team, is to review completed functional specification documents for RICEF objects. These documents, written by functional subject matter experts, are supposed to detail business requirements that address gaps, and which need to be incorporated into the system being implemented. The purpose of the review is to make sure that the functional specification documents are complete, accurate, and contain the approval signatures required to move on to the technical design phase.
The Ergonomic User Interface
Every Monday morning I hop on a plane, arrive at my destination city, pick up a rental car, and drive to my client’s site. The car rental company gives me a different make and model car every week. And yet, somehow, I am successfully able to open the car, adjust the seat and mirrors, start the car, shift gears, and drive. I can also operate the radio, air conditioning, heat, windshield wipers, and headlights.
Now, put me behind a keyboard in front of a computer application which I have never seen before. My user experience is all over the map – somewhere in the continuum between most excellent and very poor. Some application user interfaces are extremely intuitive, well-designed and easy to navigate, logically follow the business process flow, and provide real meaningful help when needed. Other application user interfaces are extremely difficult to navigate, are not intuitive, do not follow a logical business process flow, and offer little or no meaningful help. And sometimes in these difficult user interfaces, not only has the location of the steering wheel been moved to a totally unsuspecting location, but its appearance has been changed so that, even when I see it, I do not even recognize it as being the application’s steering wheel.
A well-engineered user interface is no accident. It doesn’t just magically happen. It must be woven into the fabric of the design and the code; and it should never be shoe-horned into the application as an after-thought. It takes a lot of up front planning, designing, testing, functional effort and technical effort to produce a really good application user interface. And yes, designing, building, testing, and implementing a good user interface for your application will extend the delivery time of whatever it is that you are building.
Why is a well-designed and ergonomic user interface so important? You could have built the best application ever developed. But if it is unusable, it will never get very far. Countless hours are lost every day as thousands of frustrated users spend extra time and effort wrestling with poorly designed user interfaces, rather than focusing on their jobs. And when the frustration levels reach a certain trigger point, the users will seek out and find alternative ways to perform their duties.
Here are a few examples of some very interesting user interface experiences that I have personally encountered.
Read more
SAP Upgrades & Recycling Project Artifacts
In my previous post on SAP upgrades I discussed how to get started on your project and to determine whether you are doing (ahem!) just a technical upgrade or intend to venture into deploying additional standard functionality, too. In this post I’ll talk about how you can plan, anticipate and potentially accelerate some of the execution activities to verify the upgrade is working.
21 Things to Remember for Your Next SAP Upgrade
Is it time for your company to consider an SAP Upgrade?
The choice to upgrade your company’s SAP platform is a very important business decision. Many criteria need to be considered when determining if an SAP upgrade is the right move and, if so, what type of upgrade needs to take place (ECC 6.0, Enhancement Packs, etc.). A successful SAP upgrade requires the determination of your upgrade requirements, proper planning, and an assessment of technical and functional risk. Below is a sample of our SAP Upgrade Checklist white paper:
Determine Your Upgrade Requirements
- What are the business reasons for upgrading? Support from the business for an upgrade project is most important. If there are no business reasons for upgrading, then you should probably not do it. Included here are the business risks incurred by not upgrading.
- What are the technical reasons for upgrading? Included here are the technical risks incurred by not upgrading. (Posture increasing maintenance fees for old versions or complete support withdrawal as a business risk – not a technical risk.)
For the complete list, download the full white paper:
SAP Upgrade Checklist
Related Links:
Liveblogging SAP TechEd 09
Are you stuck in your cube while Bob from BASIS is heading to SAP TechEd 09 in sunny Phoenix? Are you afraid that you’ll miss out on all the sun and fun? While we can’t send the sun, we’ll try to bring you the fun. DataXstream will be liveblogging at SAP TechEd 09.
Head over to live.dataxstream.com on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 to get up to second updates from the show. We will be getting our liveblog on starting at 8am PDT (that’s 11am for you right-coasters) for the general keynote session. We’ll also be liveblogging from SAP TechEd 09 Demo Jam at 8pm PDT on Tuesday. The Demo Jam promises to be a great time, so plan to join us online after you put the kiddies to bed!
This is our first foray into liveblogging. Hopefully it will go off without too many technical glitches. We hope you’ll enjoy following the events with us!
