Jose Fajardo, PMP, M.S. and SAP certified has worked as a test
lead and test manager for various companies utilizing automated
testing tools. He has written and published numerous articles and
founded the company Octane Systems. Throughout his career, Jose has
filed many roles that helped to create testing standards, mentor
junior programmers, audit testing results, and implement automated
testing strategies and best practices. Jose can be contacted by
clicking on this link to email him
Jose Farjardo.
Summary: Are you in the midst of an SAP R/3 upgrade or implementing
SAP R/3 from scratch? Are you prepared to perform all the activities
and tasks that are concomitant with the various SAP testing phases?
The author identifies testing risks and shares lessons learned from
testing SAP R/3. The author provides insights and recommendations
for avoiding these testing risks that could halt SAP testing efforts
and consequently delay the expected deployment of SAP into a live
production environment. The insights range from documenting test
cases to working with testing artifacts from the ASAP methodology.
Title: Lessons Learned from Testing SAP R/3
SAP R/3 is the market leader in ERP installations and ERP sales. SAP
has thousands of tables, multiple industry specific solutions,
thousands of transactions, and connectivity to an unlimited number
of legacy systems. Furthermore SAP can be configured differently
from one company to another which creates a myriad of permutations
for executing an SAP transaction. Installing and customizing SAP is
a daunting challenge. Testing SAP R/3 is in and of itself another
intractable challenge.
Many projects fail to test SAP correctly and consequently suffer
staggering financial loses after deploying SAP into a live
environment. The key to maximizing the value and ROI of SAP is to
install and customize SAP correctly based on the documented
requirements and to test it extensively based on the documented test
cases and end-to-end business scenarios. Below some lessons learned
are offered and identified to help organizations test SAP.
1. Not following methodology or No methodology at all
Some companies implementing SAP adhere to the ASAP methodology.
Other companies have ad-hoc or ASAP-like methodologies for
implementing SAP.
Even companies that are supposedly implementing SAP based on the
ASAP methodology are not very strict and stringent in adhering to
all the activities, deliverables, and tasks associated with ASAP.
Consequently, but not surprisingly these companies have much
confusion, obfuscation, befuddlement when they attempt to implement
SAP. Compounding this problem is the fact that many large companies
implementing SAP hire two or more implementation partners and
multiple subcontractors that have incompatible approaches,
methodologies, and lessons learned for implementing SAP.
The project manager and the steering committee should specify within
the project charter how SAP will be implemented and what
deliverables will be produced based on either ASAP or some other
proprietary methodology. The objective is to have defined, proven,
and repeatable processes for implementing SAP and that the project
members have the knowledge or know-how for adhering to the
methodology. The creation of an audit team or standards team would
be helpful in enforcing compliance with the chosen methodology.
