14. Procedures, Standards, Guidelines are not adhered to or enforced

Symptoms: The Quality Assurance team, the change management team, the integration team and cut-over team set up procedures and standards for: 

a. Creating test cases,

b. Creating test scenarios,

c. Creating BPPs (Business Process Procedures),

d. Creating functional design specs,

e. Creating technical design specs,

f. Transporting objects,

g. Change control,

h. Reporting defects,

i. Logging end user help desk tickets,

j. Ground rules for holding workshops during blueprint, etc  

Yet these procedures and standards are not enforced. Common symptoms from failing to enforce project standards include:

i.         The functional team being unaware as to what the naming standards are for functional design spec documents,

ii.       the Basis team is unsure as to what all the necessary approvals are for transporting an object,

iii.      the test team does not know what the entrance and exit criteria is for moving from one testing phase to the next,

iv.     the change management team does not have clearly defined guidelines for creating BPPs,

v.       the functional team does not accurately capture end user requirements during blueprint,

vi.      User Acceptance Test (UAT) participants do not know their roles, deliverables and responsibilities during for testing the system.

vii.    Development team does not create custom program that conform to project standards for performance, and naming conventions 

Suggestions: Document all project standards and guidelines in a shared drive after obtaining buy-in and approval for these standards and guidelines from the project stakeholders and PMO.  

Dedicate a resource to coach and train project team members on the project’s standards and guidelines in particular for new resources joining the project. This resource should inspect work-products and deliverables at a predefined frequency.  

In one of my previous SAP implementations the project adhered to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which many SAP consultants were unfamiliar with and the project had dedicated resources to coach new arriving resources on the CMM model for SAP testing. 

Artifacts, deliverables and work products that are no in compliance with the project’s standards and guidelines should be brought to the attention of the individuals responsible for producing the deliverable for corrective action.