AIP and The SAP Business ONE Project Lifecycle
AIP and The SAP Business ONE Project Lifecycle
By Eduardo Levenfeld
If you’re already someone with some experience in project management, but you have just started your first experience in managing a SAP Business One Implementation project (like me), then I hope this post contribute with the success of your project.
A first and good step
First of all, a good first step is to get access permissions to browse the SAP’s PartnerEdge portal and the SAP Community Network (SCN) (usually the person the person in your company who has the admin/manager permissions will grant you those permissions). There’s a lot of awesome and useful content there. So, go ahead and make sure you have that access.
ASAP and AIP
- ASAP
Ok. Now you have permissions to navigate in SCN and PartnerEdge, let’s start talking about the ASAP, AIP and other acronyms from the SAP ecosystem.
When you read about ASAP in the SAP universe, it usually stands for the Accelerated SAP Methodology that is a well defined and documented methodology and set of templates and processes focused on the project management activity in an SAP implementation.
I’ll talk more about ASAP in future posts, but, for now it’s good to know that it usually fits better in more complex SAP projects (All-in-One and Business Suite/R3) and that is has several variations (Agile projects, HANA projects, etc.).
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AIP
SAP Business ONE projects are usually less complex and faster than All-In-One and Business Suite/R3 projects. So, the SAP fortunately created and introduced the Accelerated Implementation Program (AIP) that’s is another well defined methodology and set of templates based on the ASAP model, but, more simple, lighter and suitable for the SAP Business ONE (B1) implementation project.
The project lifecycle is the same as that in the ASAP, but, as I said, less complex and lighter. Take a look in the following picture.
Figure 1: AIP Project Lifecycle Let’s take a look in each step!
- Project Preparation
The project preparation phase is usually confused with the project planning phase. In fact, it englobes the project planning, sales handoff and project kick-off, but, it also has focus in the IT infrastructure requirements and the setup of product / environment (testing and production).
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Business Blueprint
The focus of the business blueprint is mainly to map the business processes and requirements, find the gaps, define the change approach / key users, make decisions about what will need to be specifically developed/coded and, finally (and recommended), measure the impact of everything (gaps, requirements, coding, etc…) in the project schedule (and negotiate / redefine it, if necessary).
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Realization
It’s the main execution phase, so, the expected tasks here are: module configuration, data validation and import, interface and reports implementation, specific development / coding execution, tests, project management control activities and so on.
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Final Preparation
This very important phase is about preparing the company for go-live with the SAP Business One. So, the expected tasks here are: planning and executing the key user training schedules, planning the cut-over and support and, finally, conducting the integrated tests / simulations and a go/no go decision making.
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Go-Live Support
This is the critical and most awaited moment. At this point, the project team is sure that all is done and checked for go-live with the SAP Business One. It’s critical here to have a contingency / rollback plan in case something goes wrong, and have the key members of the team available .
If everything is alright, it’s the moment to start the post Go-Live support that usually lasts for 2 or 4 weeks.
- Project Preparation
Eduardo Levenfeld is an entrepreneur and project & portfolio management professional with good experience in EPM & PPM software tools. He has about 10 years of experience working with companies from several sectors like Manufacturing & Engineering, IT & Web, Retail, and Fashion and Cosmetics. You can read more from Eduardo on his blog.
