Phases of A Successful Implementation: #2 Business Blueprint
#2 Business Blueprint
Description
During this phase of the project, the business will define their scope for how they will use SAP within the specified areas within the business as well as understand the integration points with each other. From this scope the entire project will be baselined. Typically, any additions to the project after this phase is considered a change and could impact timeline and budget.
Key Activities
These are the activities individuals involved in the project should be expected to do during this phase.
- Business requirements gathering – verbally, via documentation or demonstration
- Necessary workshops, meetings, interviews, one-on-one discussions
- Gap analysis
Inputs and Outputs of the Phase
Inputs will be what information will be used in this phase and the Outputs are results expected during this phase.
Input: Resources to do the work
Input: Project Plan to tell us when to do the tasks
Input: Budget to tell us how to utilize people and the plan
Output: System and business design
Output: Data objects needed
Resources
These are the roles that should be expected to be involved during this phase. They should always be a part of the communication plan, but will be actively involved in this phase.
- Project team
- Business Process Owner
- Subject Matter Experts
- IT resources
- Key business users
Common Problems during this Phase
- Requirements gathering is incomplete à Make sure you capture all business areas, business processes, business integration points, legacy systems, forms, reports, and interfaces in this phase. You are going to want to setup workshops, interviews, meetings, documents gathering, etc. for the entire scope of ALL items. Something is always forgotten. The trick is minimizing this so that it has less risk to the project downstream. If you don’t review it here, it will come up later and then not afford you the necessary time to address them.
- Resources have lack of business knowledge à Along the same lines as requirements gathering, resources have the same issue. Many times, ‘a person’ is labeled as the resource for a certain area. That person is the only person involved in all the activity during this phase. That ‘resource’ may be familiar with that business area, but not have all the answers for the scope of work required for the business area. It is critical to involve other resources, pull them in one workshop, one meeting or as needed depending on the topic. These other resources will help you develop a complete wholistic business requirement for the business area/topic rather than giving you a general idea that will be figured out later. Plan for your dedicated resources, but also realize you will have additional ones help you define the entire picture.
Keeping these two common problems in mind will help you deliver this phase of your project on the right foot. Most projects don’t spend enough time in this phase. Many companies feel like it is just a task to check the box for, but what many don’t realize until you work through it, is that there are many business processes that are currently broken, don’t exist or will change with the new implementation. Therefore, it will be difficult to define a scope of work for those situations. So, you have to work through those things by making some business decisions and then define the scope. This will sometimes take longer than expected. My recommendation is if you are not finished with defining your business requirements, do not move on, or move on with caution using clear deliverables and deadlines to get caught back up on those one or two things that still need to be defined. This will help you better understand the workload ahead of you as well as allow you to properly prepare the business + system for all business needs and not just some of them.
All the Best for your Project,
Stephanie
ABOUT
SL Smith & Associates became a firm in late 2014. It was a result of the owner, Stephanie Smith breaking out from working for SAP consulting firms and doing it on her own, convinced that the cookie cutter consulting the same way for every one was so frustrating and not getting the job done.
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