IT Transformation S4/HANA – Get your project team ready in 4 weeks

The Challenge:

Our customer, a regional energy supplier, was about to start a project to implement the transformation of the process landscape in the energy industry (SAP IS-U) in the market role of the metering point operator to SAP S/4 HANA. Due to the close integration of the projects and the overall target date, any delay would have far-reaching consequences.
The implementation project was to be implemented using “SAP Activate” and the associated tooling “Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager”. The methodology is a hybrid approach that combines process elements from Waterfall, V-Model, SAFe and Scrum.
Neither the designated core team members nor the developers were aware of SAP Activate, Focused Build, Scrum, or SAFe. Methodological prior knowledge was only available to a very limited extent. The product owners had a heterogeneous knowledge and different previous experience of their role.
Ventum Consulting was contracted at short notice to make the entire project team methodologically ready to work within four weeks, to design the agile teams and to enable the project to start implementation.

A picture is worth a thousand words: We created a unified picture that relates and brings together the different perspectives on process models, roles, workflows, development cycles, sprint cadences, and workflows. This made abstract models tangible and independent representations coherent.
Dedicated Teams: Contrary to the original plan, we have implemented a 1:1 allocation of core team to developer:s. In this way, all participants were able to familiarize themselves with thematic focal points, had a stable anchor in a rapidly changing environment, and team building was made possible. These were key factors in increasing productivity in the medium term.
Clear Expectation Management: Agile work is built on effectiveness, not efficiency, and provides for a learning curve. We curbed the initially very high expectations of concrete results through (sometimes difficult) discussions, generated understanding and thus supported the teams in their work and learning curve.
Think planning across the board and incrementally: The original feature planning and roadmap envisioned a very team-individual implementation of the full existing scope of the legacy system. Planning workshops allowed us to identify interdependencies between teams and put quarterly planning on a common footing.

Start on time: All three teams were able to start implementing the processes in technical metering point operation with SAP Activate, Focused Build, and Scrum according to the very athletic schedule that had been announced.
Safe harbour: All participants had a basic understanding of the methods and tools used, which could be built upon with further training, and were part of a dedicated team.
Intrinsic agility: Agile work was not just the paint job on the outside, it came to life. Methods and processes were not adopted without being asked, but were questioned and adapted to the specific needs of the team.