ASAP Phase 1: Project Preparation

In this phase of the ASAP Roadmap, decision-makers define clear project objectives and an efficient decision-making process. A project charter is issued, an implementation strategy is outlined, and the project team as well as its working environment are established.

The first step is for the project managers to set up the implementation project(s). They draw up a rough draft of the project, appoint the project team and hold a kickoff meeting. The kickoff meeting is critical, since at this time the project team and process owners become aware of the project charter and objectives and are allocated their responsibilities, lasting throughout the project.

Initial Project Scope/Technical Requirements

As the reference point for initial project scope, and updates or changes to the R/3 implementation, the project team can use the Enterprise Area Scope Document to compare the enterprise’s requirements with the business processes and functions offered by R/3. In this way the project scope is roughly defined from a business and IT view. The former view concentrates on the enterprise’s business processes that are to be supported by IT; the latter focuses on the IT required, down to the network and memory requirements.

Project Organization and Roles

One of the first work packages in Phase 1 is the definition of the overall project team and the specification of project roles to be assumed during implementation.

The main roles in an implementation project are that of the project manager, the application consultants, the business process team leader, the technical project leader/systems adminstrator, and the development project leader.

* The project manager is responsible for planning and carrying out the project.
* The application consultant creates the Business Blueprint by identifying the business process requirements, configures the R/3 System together with the business process team, transfers knowledge to the customer team members and assists the business process team with testing.
* The business process team lead at the customer site manages the work involved in analyzing and documenting the enterprise's business processes. This person directs and works with the business process team members, process owners, and users in order to develop the R/3 design, configure the system and validate the design. Furthermore, this person ensures that the R/3 implementation is tested and documented, and obtains agreement from both the business process owners and users.
* The technical team lead at the customer site is responsible for managing the completion of all technical project deliverables. The technical team lead works with the Project Manager to complete the technical requirements planning, and to plan and manage the technical scope and resources schedule. The technical team lead is also responsible for the overall technical architecture of the R/3 System.
* The development project lead is responsible for managing the definition, development and testing of necessary conversions, interfaces, reports, enhancements and authorizations.
* The R/3 system administrator is responsible for configuring, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting the R/3 technical environment on an ongoing basis, as well as performing checks, tasks, and backups within the technical environment, scheduling and executing the R/3 transport system and Computing Center Management System (CCMS). The R/3 system administrator manages and executes the R/3 installations, upgrades and system patches.

An example of an accelerator in ASAP is the "Project Staffing User Guide", which outlines all of the project roles, expectations, time commitments and responsibilities for everyone involved in the implementation. It also contains pre-defined organizational chart templates for the implementation team.

Implementation Scope

Phase 1 includes a scoping document called the Enterprise Area Scope Document, which is based on the R/3 Reference Model and can be generated using the Project Estimator. It contains high-level user-defined views of the scope of the project, as well as defining the corresponding plants, sites, distribution channels, and legal entities. This scoping document maps to the Question & Answer Database (Q&Adb), which is used in Phase 2 to determine the detailed process and development requirements.

ASAP includes many document and reporting templates, as well as examples that can be used to help determine implementation standards and procedures. Procedures for scope changes, issue resolution, and team communication need to be defined. AcceleratedSAP provides you with instructions, examples and templates to put these procedures in place.

One of the most important procedures to be defined in Phase 1 is how to carry out project documentation, in particular R/3 System design documentation. For information on project decisions, issue resolution, or configuration changes required at a later date, good project documentation is invaluable. The following types of documentation should be defined in this phase and maintained throughout the project:

* Project deliverables
* Project work papers and internal project team documentation
* Business processes to be implemented
* R/3 design specifications for enterprise-specific enhancements
* Documentation on R/3 configuration and Customizing settings
* End user documentation
* Code corrections using OSS notes or Hot Packages
* Service reports and documentation.

More information on documenting the R/3 configuration can be found in Phase 3.

System Landscape and Technical Requirements

In Phase 1, the project team decides on the system landscape, as well as on the high-level strategies for creating R/3 clients, implementing new releases and transporting system settings. One R/3 System can be divided into multiple clients as needed, thus allowing for the handling of separate enterprises in one R/3 installation.

The technical requirements for implementing R/3 include defining the infrastructure needed and procuring the hardware and the necessary interfaces. For this purpose, you can make use of the Quick Sizing Service, which can be accessed via SAPNet.

The Quick Sizing Tool, or Quick Sizer calculates CPU, disk and memory resource categories based on the number of users working with the different components of the R/3 System in a hardware and database independent format. The tool intends to give customers an idea of the system size necessary to run the required workload, and therefore provides input for initial budget planning. It also offers the possibility of transactional/quantity-based sizing, therefore enabling customers to include their batch load in the sizing as well.

The Quick Sizing Service should be used as an input for hardware partners to identify your hardware needs and also get an idea of the probable size of the needed hardware configuration for project and budget planning reasons.

The archiving concept is drawn up in Phase 1. Regular, targeted archiving optimizes your hardware use and avoids performance problems. With the Remote Archiving Service, SAP enables you to outsource all the tasks associated with archiving the data in your R/3 System and have them performed by SAP specialists. As part of this service, SAP also customizes the archiving configuration in your system or verifies the current configuration. However, the Remote Archiving Service cannot provide the concept for your archiving strategy - it must be worked out as part of your implementation project.

It might seem too early to discuss archiving at this stage. However, eperience has shown that it is important to define the strategy as early as possible to ensure that archiving can be carried out when needed later.

Issues Database

Managing and resolving issues that come up during the project is an essential responsibility of the project manager and is fundamental to the success of an implementation. The focus of the manager should be to resolve or prevent issues. However, escalation procedures need to be in place in case an issue cannot be solved by the project team. Typically, issues must be resolved before phase completion or before beginning the next phase.

Issues can be regarded as hurdles that are identified during a project and may influence the success of the project. They can be:

* Unanticipated tasks
* Normal tasks that cannot be completed
* External factors that need to be dealt with

The Issues Database allows the project team to enter, track, and report on project issues. The database supports the following data for each issue identified:

* Priority
* Project phase
* Status
* People responsible
* Date required for solution
* Date resolved
* Classification (for example: resource, documentation, training or configuration issue)

Based on this data, the Issues Database enables you to quickly retrieve the information on specific issues by using filters and views on the data entered.

Concept Check Tool

ASAP also includes a concept check tool to evaluate the system concept and configuration and alert you to potential performance or design issues.

Using the tool checklists, you can analyze the project and implementation work either by yourself or with the assistance of your SAP consultant. The check focuses on project organization and the configuration of the R/3 applications.

Fig. Xxx: The Concept Check Tool

The checklists are designed dynamically, that is, as each question is answered, the following questions are selected so that you only answer those questions relevant to your system configuration. The checklists are used in the first two phases AcceleratedSAP, as it is advisable to deal with questions relating to each phase of the project as they arise.

IDES – the R/3 Model Company

The R/3 International Demo and Education System (IDES) is an additional R/3 system/client which is supplied with predefined system settings and master data. It is an integrated, fully configured, fully functional model company with an international scope and sample product range, which you can use early in your implementation. It is used, for example, in Phase 2 as a reference for R/3 processes and functionality. After defining the corresponding link, you can branch directly from the business process transactions of the Q&Adb to the live transaction in IDES.

In order to get started with the R/3 System quickly, you can use IDES to help visualize your own solution. During the planning phase, you can try out all the business scenarios to find the design best suited to your requirements. IDES also forms the basis for SAP’s entire R/3 training program, including examples and exercises, and is the ideal way of preparing for release changeovers.