Rapid SAP Implementations (part 4)

The High Level Project Plan

When I talk about my experience rolling out SAP following a 2 month project plan, many people simply refuse to believe it. But the fact is, I have implemented SAP at 15 manufacturing sites around the world and 10 out of 15 were done following this 2 month cookie cutter approach.

Throughout this blog series, I have included several golden nuggets of information, but in this post, we just may hit the mother load. Here I will share an outline of the high level project plan. I am working on a book, On Your Mark, Get Set, Go Live, where I will share the detailed project plan, so to get the real meat, you will have to wait for the book to come out.

Outline of the High Level Project Plan:

Week 1
Review the AS-IS processes of the new company plant and share the TO-BE processes with the Key users. Determine if there are any significant differences. Working through the differences is easier than you might think if you approach them correctly.

Week 2 & 3
Configuration and Unit Testing. During this time, the new company plant is configured in SAP and simple unit tests performed by the SAP team confirms that the new configuration is working properly in the development system.

Week 4
Master Data Load. In week 4, we begin to test the data loads in the development system. Master data includes information such as material masters (part numbers), customer masters, and vendor masters.

Week 5
Milestone - Transport to QA. In the beginning of week 5, the configuration is moved to the Quality System. Week 5 also marks the beginning of Integration testing in the QA system, and Business Process Procedures are updated in preparation for training the rest of the plant.

Week 6 & 7
Integration testing is wrapped up by the end of week 6 and user training is performed in weeks 6 & 7. At the end of week 6, marks another milestone - transport to the production system. This has to be done in preparation for loading data into the production system. During week 7, the master data is loaded into the production system. At the end of week 7, the final open data is extracted from the legacy system. Open data includes the load of information such as G/L balances, sales orders, and purchase orders.

Week 8
Open Data Load. This is it. During week 8 we load the open data and validate the data is correct in the production system. Once the validation is complete, the site is live on SAP and can commence business transactions.


Obviously this outline is at a very high level and there is a lot of detail that is not included in this here. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them and I will be happy to respond.