A Project Manager's Perspective On Implementing SAP

A Project Managers Perspective on Implementing SAP
17/7/2014 SAP for IT Professionals

A Project Managers Perspective
on Implementing SAP
Submitted by :
Pooja Bandooni (13609031)
Divyansha Garg (13609125)

1
Objective
The role of the project management roadmap
A deeper look at SAPs ASAP methodology
Other contemporary SAP methods and tools
The role and makeup of the SAP project team
Various SAP leadership bodies
17/07/2014 SAP for IT Professionals 2

Need For ASAP Methodology
Running a business is complex
Global economics further complicate the matter
Calculating an SAP project RIO, can be subjective and nearly impossible in
many case
Executives and other business leaders are not inclined to naturally endorse
the kind of changes and there for business risk
ERP implementation process itself cumbersome, subject to iteration and
therefore inordinately expensive.

What is ASAP ?
ASAP was originally envisioned for small projects , eventually it became
the important standard for describing an SAP implementation road map for
project management perspective.

ASAP helps the project team to optimize the time , people and other
resources necessary to implement SAP.

View To ASAP Roadmap
The Project Management Office

PMO team is responsible for developing and coordinating a cooperative
environment among all the different team member , so that together the
team my succeed.

Key Task Of PMO:

Developing and maintaining the overall project plan and scheduling tasks.
Managing scope and resource planning , a validating and aligning resource
and budget to projects goal and objective.

The Project Management Office

Managing communication , including monitoring and improving upon the
projects progress via regular reporting stage wise or phase specific schedule
meeting.

Managing risk and contingencies and providing directions to the project
team when priorities and leaders conflict.

Maximizing the project quality which might include escalating issues to the
stakeholders committee or the project board as necessary .
Assembling The Project Team

When structuring the project team following points should be considered :

Assess the areas the will be affected by SAP installation.
Identify the skill required for each member
Assess the member of companys IT organization specifically tasked with
supporting SAP

Sap Project Leadership Bodies :

SAP Project Leadership
The Executive Steering Committee
Project Sponsor
The Overall SAP Project Manager

Example of Sample project team
Doc1.docx

Contemporary Tools and Methodologies
SAP Solution Manager (SolMan)
Today SolMan offers not only multiple roadmaps to implementation but
also improved content. This content includes sample documents, new
templates, a repository for canned business processes, and excellent project
management tools.

Project close out
Eventually, every SAP project comes to a conclusion (hopefully a positive
one), where the new system is turned on, the old one shut down, and the
work of the project team is gracefully halted.
Shifting focus: From Business to Technology

The next phase in conducting an SAP deployment involves the technical
infrastructure underpinning SAPs components and products.

The SAP basis team temporarily changes the SAP projects attention from a business
focus to a technology focus.
11 17/07/2014 SAP for IT Professionals
Installation Master guides and SAP notes

The Master Guide points where to go for the actual electronic media required for the
installation, and they walk through the installation scenario.

Different installation scenarios are typically covered, in fact, guiding through
installing the different combinations of software components necessary to create the
foundation for a specific SAP solution.

Setting the Stage: The SAP Landscape

A three-system landscape is historically the most common approach and comprises a
development system, a quality assurance or test system, and a production system.

Business and IT support requirements could drive you to deploy a seven or eight-
system landscape for some of the most complex SAP components, such as SAP
ERP. Other components, such as SAP SCM or SAP Product Lifecycle Management
(PLM) might dictate a leaner landscape.
Architecture and Sizing Considerations

Before an SAP installation is ever performed, someone must plan for, or architect,
the SAP environment. This process gives way to designing the system, a process
called sizing.

Decisions have to be made as to which SAP components are going to be deployed
and how they will be deployed.

Sizing is a balancing act between what the business thinks its new system needs to
do and how it needs to perform.
ABAP and Java Stack Considerations
Before sizing, its necessary to determine the technical stack that will eventually be
deployed.

The SAP Net Weaver platform supports both ABAP and Java stacks, either alone or
in conjunction with one another. Typically, the decision as to which platform to use
is dictated by the SAP components being deployed.

For example, Employee Self-Service (ESS) requires Java, whereas ERP 6.0 requires
ABAP
Infrastructure Architecture
With the technology stack noted, the SAP Basis professional needs to turn the list of
all the required SAP components and products into an infrastructure architecture.

Beyond the list of software components (such as SAP ERP 6.0), the modules being
deployed and the number of users for each module are important; the number and
their weight (heavy, medium, or low) will help the hardware partners make the
right choices in terms of memory and processing power required for each server.\

The output of these typically time-consuming and detailed sizing efforts is a
physical infrastructure architecture model and bill of materials reflecting the SAP
software components and the associated servers for each landscape and component.
The architecture needs to account for what it means to provide acceptable
performance, availability, scalability, disaster recoverability, and so on.
High Availability
Availability is probably the most important consideration in your SAP architecture.
There are many high-availability options for SAP installations, each of which
depends on the hardware platform, operating system, and integration requirements.

SAP applications servers are normally made highly available through a combination
of redundancy in the form of multiple application servers and the use of SAP logon
groups.

Other high-availability (HA) offerings can prove useful, as well, extending HA
capabilities to include disaster recoverability.
Disaster Recoverability

With all the firms revenue flowing through the system and all the books of record
maintained in one place, its simply not acceptable to just have some kind of plan in
case of a disaster. A disaster recovery plan is necessary.

Common DR solutions include:-
o Basic backup/restore from tape or disk
o Database log shipping
o Solutions involving storage replication technologies.

SAP Technical Readiness and Security
Considerations

Building and Hosting Site Readiness
- A company-internal datacenter is ideal for security or secure access considerations,
or maybe a hosting partner is more cost-effective or strategically equipped to
support a particular geography.

- Today, its easy to install and monitor systems remotely regardless of computing
platform. For organizations concerned with controlling site access and managing
their datas location, however, these kinds of hosting facility choices are important.

Network considerations

- Network security has become the most important facet of easy network access.

- From Secure Network Communication (SNC), to Public Key Infrastructure (PKI,
enabling users to securely move data across unsecured networks), to Single Sign On
(SSO; which brings multiple applications together, at least from a logon
perspective), access to SAP is becoming easier.

- The availability of SAP components through the Internet (if applicable) must also be
addressed. The goal of all this is to provide a secure environment for the SAP
servers without impacting the applications ultimate functionality.

- Depending on the specific situation, the network might need special firewalls or
proxy servers or other such devices targeted to provide a more secure environment
for SAP.


Data and Database Layer

- Securely installing and managing the databases and other data stores supporting SAP
are important to the SAP systems overall availability, performance, and security.

- Setting up and enforcing database-specific roles are also important.

- Databases need to be hardened from worms and other threats, just like the OS. It is
important to develop a backup/recovery strategy prior to go-live.

- Be sure to test the backup/recovery strategy not only before go-live but afterward
on a regular basis.
SAP Basis and Application Security
Considerations

The SAP Basis professional will spend a good amount of time working to
ensure the SAP application layer itself performs well, is secured, and is
available, starting with performing a secure SAP Basis installation .

Once installed, the application needs to be secured via security administration
and basic risk mitigation practices.

Beyond basic tasks like maximizing the performance of and controlling access
to SAPs executables and binaries, pay attention to matters such as SAP
archiving and backup/restore.
Third-Party Application Considerations

Utility-like applications from Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft might be employed to
connect systems together. Companies might use other software vendors to supply
their customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM),
or business analytics systems.

These third-party applications need to be made highly available, safeguarded, and
integrated consistent with the SAP systems availability, security, and performance
targets.
End-User Access Strategy
From WebGUI and portal access to using the traditional SAP graphical user
interface (GUI), the BEx Explorer, or an easily developed SharePoint web part, the
SAP Basis team needs to be involved in managing this access.

Developing a client access strategy addresses how the SAP applications end-user
community will access its system, including how to access the system when the
primary access method is unavailable.

The key to determining the best access strategy falls back to balancing the level of
functionality required by the user against what constitutes acceptable performance
delivered in a secure and cost-effective manner.
Staffing and Operational
Considerations
SAP Basis Staffing
- One of the most valuable resources behind an SAP implementation, the SAP Basis
team directly impacts how well the SAP production system will perform its intended
function: to support the companys business processes.

- Many SAP Basis teams are composed of two sub teams: a project team and a run
(or steady-state or base load team). Further, its common for SAP Basis teams to
be made up of a mix of company employees, hosting partner resources, and
contractors possessing specialized skills or experience.

- In the end, many other IT sister teams are employed part-time by the SAP
Basis team:
o IT project management office (PMO) team
o Datacenter team
o Server infrastructure team
o SAN/disk subsystem team

Staffing and Operational
Considerations

17/07/2014 SAP for IT Professionals
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