S/4HANA Project Management

S/4HANA project management for brownfield and greenfield, with one place for status and traceability down to the transport.

S/4HANA rarely fails on technology. It fails on project status.

The challenge: many parties, no shared status

Introducing SAP S/4HANA is a transformation project. It needs a clear target picture and steering that shows where the work stands at any point.

What goes wrong in these programmes rarely has anything to do with ABAP. Business, development, SAP Basis and infrastructure work in different tools, and nobody brings the states together. The status report then comes from hearsay, and the next one contradicts the last.

The status lives in a spreadsheet

Requirement and transport are not linked

Every status round costs half a day

At go-live the evidence is missing

How we run the project

We align every phase from planning to go-live. The status sits in one place, and each requirement keeps its link to the transport.

Jira carries the scope items, work packages, releases and sprints, aligned to the rhythm of SAP Activate. The SAP transport status hangs off the same issue, so "where does this stand" has an answer nobody has to assemble first.

Plan

Target picture, scope and sequence, before the first transport is written. Scope items and work packages live in Jira rather than in a spreadsheet.

Steer

One place for the status, instead of a table passed back and forth between Jira and Solution Manager. Releases and waves sit next to the sprints.

Evidence

Traceability from requirement to transport, without anyone assembling it by hand. Reports come out of the system state.

How it works: what we set up

Every element of the project scope becomes a Jira issue. Ownership, dates, dependencies and, once development starts, the SAP transport hang off it. Progress moves out of the status meeting and into the system where the work happens anyway.

Test and release management run in the same tool, so the spreadsheets alongside disappear. Dashboards show the state in real time, for the project team and for the steering committee alike. The case for Jira in SAP projects is set out in Benefits of Project Management for SAP Projects with Jira.

Requirements, epics and work packages in Jira rather than in a spreadsheet
The SAP transport hangs off the issue it came from
Releases and waves aligned with the project sprints
Test and release management in the same tool, with no spreadsheets alongside
Risks and dependencies in the same place as progress
Dashboards showing the state in real time
Permissions that keep confidential project data separate
Confluence for documentation, connected to Jira

What S/4HANA changes for your processes

The move touches master data, reporting and the way your departments work. Plan it as an upgrade and you have planned the smaller half.

Brownfield and greenfield differ in how much history comes along. For steering that changes little. The case for the move itself is laid out in 5 reasons for your SAP S/4HANA migration.

What S/4HANA brings

The move is a transformation project. The technical part is the predictable one.

Cross ALM as a project partner

Cross ALM is an IT and process consultancy based in Berlin, grown out of a team of former SAP employees and SAP specialists. Our consultants work to ITIL and are ITIL certified, and we are a certified partner of SAP and Atlassian as well as a ServiceNow Select Build Partner.

That combination is why project steering and the SAP transport chain sit with the same team here. How Solution Manager fits into an S/4HANA conversion is covered in S/4HANA Conversion with SAP Solution Manager.

Method

SAP Activate for the rhythm, ITIL for the processes behind it, Jira and Confluence as tools that non-technical participants can also operate.

The link

The connection between requirement and SAP transport is our own product, not an interface somebody invents during the project.

Experience

Projects in large corporates, automotive, financial services, logistics, pharma, telecommunications, retail and public administration.

Starting in three steps

The steering can be set up before the migration starts. That is also the best moment for it.

Analyse your processes

We look at how project steering, testing and release run today, and where the status actually lives.

Set up Jira

Scope items, work packages, releases and sprints, connected to the SAP transport chain and matched to your method.

Training and support

We train your team, support the first waves and hand over to named people in your organisation.

From customer projects

How project steering and the SAP transport chain come together is written up in our project reports: SAP Transport Management System – Jira Integration at HUK-Coburg shows transports driven from Jira, and DevSecOps for SAP with ChaRM at Deutsche Bahn a group that had to combine governance with speed.

The details are on S/4HANA Project Management with Jira.