Design And Implementation
1. Determine if proper planning has been formalized
- Has a clearly established functional or geographical approach been established?
- Has a structure methodology been adopted?
- Has a top-down plan been developed to address system integration issues?
- Have SAP release dates been taken into consideration as part of the plan?
- Does the plan consider the time to perform a post-implementation review?
- Has a Steering Committee been organized to include all functional business areas?
- Have enterprise-wide standards been established?
- Are users assigned to key project management positions?
- Has an integration team been established with members from all functional areas?
- Has a technical team been established separate from the functional team to share technical responsibility and to ensure standard techniques are employed?
- Is the staff size appropriate for the scope of the implementation?
- 5-7 members for each core module.
- Review the training program to ensure that it is adequate and addresses all functional areas.
- Ensure that the training approach is integrated into the project methodology.
- Ensure that adequate time for all levels of training is scheduled.
- Are standard project control tools and documentation formats used across teams to ensure consistent communication and minimize impact of team turnover?
- Are weekly or even daily cross-team progress meetings held along with monthly steering committee meetings to communicate status and resolve issues?
- Are issues logs used to resolve project delays?
- Ensure that a consistent implementation methodology across all teams is being employed.
- Is the project measured by workplan tasks and deliverables rather than hours spent?
- Are support systems such as Lotus Notes or e-mail established at the beginning of the project.
- If the project team is going through a large re-engineering effort, ensure that it is completed prior to the beginning the SAP implementation process. Otherwise, the changes can be incorporated during the analysis and design phases.
- Ensure that all re-engineering processes are formally signed-off.
- Have practices and processes globally been harmonized along with SAP functionality?
- Have worldwide representatives on the project been present during the prototyping and Join Application Develop (JAD) sessions to ensure that system decisions are properly conducted.
- Are key system checkpoints mapped to the global design to ensure the system meets the needs of each region?
- Are the use of prototyping and playbacks used to validate the design?
- Have key data items such as material number, customer number, chart of accounts, and company codes been standardized?
- Determine if an overall integration plan has been developed and reviewed by the integration team?
- Has the integration team been involved throughout the project?
- Are the integration points tested throughout the project?
- Has the organizational hierarchy been properly established within SAP as an initial step?
- Have any modifications to the SAP supplied software been completed? If so, determine the risk impact of such modifications.
- Are cross-checks conducted periodically for table configurations with all team members?
- Are checks conducted to ensure that table and file structures are consistent across all locations?
10. Determine if data ownership responsibilities are defined for the SAP objects (fields).
