Planning for SAP changes – large or small – is rarely a straightforward process. The sting of past projects that were fraught with delays, cost overruns and missed deadlines lingers over teams and stakeholders as they prepare for the next one.
Exceeding budgets and late delivery across SAP projects can result in major consequences for a business, including customer dissatisfaction and lost revenue. We see many organizations suffer from this, with a UK County Council’s late £7.3 million RISE with SAP launch being one of the latest cases to hit the news, but many more happen behind closed doors.
Due to the complexity of SAP projects, especially large transformations, we have almost accepted a high level of unpredictability in our plans. But there are several steps you can take in the early stages of your projects to mitigate these risks and delays, from better identifying stakeholders to analyzing historical data.
This article explores three pitfalls that commonly lead to missed deadlines and offers you potential solutions to rethink your planning stage, so your future SAP projects are delivered on time, every time.
1. Scope creep
Teams can suffer from a constant additive mindset of ‘just one more thing’, or ‘can we include another…’. It’s often brought about because the change owners feel dissatisfied with the opportunities and pace of change. They see this as their one open window in which to get through everything they want and so they grab it, extend the scope and delay the change.
Take back control by defining the scope with realistic timescales, planned phases and releases, and build the trust in the business that delivering precise, quality changes is not just possible, but routine.
2. Stretched resources
It’s frustrating for individuals to be pulled from one project to assist on another, and it has a knock-on effect where the first project is delayed at the cost of improving the next. It is a constant cycle of trade-offs.
So, if you know early on that a change will require certain data or business input, one particular expert or architect, or involves a security and authorization adjustments, you can get those teams prepared from the outset. It allows them to plan internally, by engaging with all the relevant stakeholders to facilitate cross-team collaboration and awareness.
3. Reinventing the wheel
One of the biggest mistakes that teams can make is setting initial project estimates that are overly optimistic or not based on realistic data. It inevitably leads to an underestimation of the time and cost required to complete the project.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Many changes are in some way similar to ones that have come before. You can improve the estimation accuracy by using historical data, predictive models and analytics tools.
Introducing ActiveDiscover: SAP change design and planning software
Understanding these best practices and implementing them are two different tasks. But we’re not suggesting you attempt this alone or without technology to support you.
Change design and planning software like ActiveDiscover allows you to accurately predict project outcomes with scenario analysis and helps you allocate resources based on their complexity and risk to operations.
By analyzing what could happen in the early stages of your project planning, you can proactively address blockers long before they threaten your deadlines.
Find out how ActiveDiscover’s features help keep your SAP projects on track.
Check out this one page explainer or download our eBook.
