Chapter 5

ERP Project Management

 INTRODUCTION
• A project is an activity to meet the creation of a unique product or service
and thus activities that are undertaken to accomplish routine activities
cannot be considered projects.
• Unique
• Temporary
• Progressive Elaboration
• Management is the coordination and administration of tasks to achieve a
goal
• Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills,
knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according
to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters.
• Project management has final deliverables that are constrained to a
finite timescale and budget.
• Jobs and responsibilities of project management team (not well defined)
• PIMBOK identifies nine areas on which project management is based
1. Integration Management
2. Scope Management
3. Time Management
4. Cost Management
5. Quality Management
6. Human Resource Management
7. Communication Management
8. Risk Management
9. Procurement Management
• Project Management Deliverables
1. Project scope document
2. Project plan
3. Resource plan
4. Project charter
5. Project risk management strategy
6. Project methods and standards
 PROJECT SCOPING
• Important expect, time & cost
• Projects got into problem as during implementation there is
misunderstanding between what the consultants believe they should do and
what the organizations expect out of the consulting team.
“Scoping are all those activities which need to be done as a part of the
project”
• Nine Levers of ERP Project Scoping
• Location Scope
• list of factories, warehouses, distribution centers
• Needs to detail out what is not there in the current project’s scope
• Implementation location of the project: Project team members and PMO
• Implementation Strategy
• Business Scope
• Whether all the business of the company under scope for implementation or just a
part of it is included
• Company decide the more favorable portion of its business area
• Process Scope
• Details out the organization processes which are part of the project implementation
• Revisited several time during project life cycle
• Difficult at the pre-implementation stage to come up with this list with greater
details
• knowledge about the package is very limited for the organization's internal team
• Knowledge about organization's business processes is very limited
• High level scope should be clearly articulate
• Additions/deletions expected at the activity level
• Organization's core team understands the application better
• Interesting features which they had not thought earlier and in the similar way the consulting
company understands its clients better.
• As the project blueprinting starts, Consulting service provider prepare a detailed
process scope document
• Application Scope
• detailed application modules which should be implemented as a part of the
project
• Different version at different stages
• Application scope definition can include things like
• Finance and accounts
• Procurement
• Inventory management
• Sales order processing
• Quality management
• Refined as process proceed
• Interface Scope
• Wrong assumption: ERP will replace all legacy application
• ERP should maintain an interface with these
• Estimate count and size of these interfaces
• Detailed interface scope document of 4-6pages
• Reports Scope
• ERPs are supposed to generate online reports on different business processes
• Many reports are available in ERP, but need few more
• Scoping: to get this list of reports
• Understand their complexity at high level
• How much will come from standard package
• How many of them need to be developed.
• Now a days most of the ERP solutions had come with business intelligence and
data warehousing applications
• Examples:
• Purchase Order Summary
• Purchase Order Detail (Consignee -wise)
• Product-wise plan for the month
• Destination-wise plan for the month
• Major customer-wise plan for the month
• Region-wise order and dispatch
• Planning vs. dispatches
• Pending orders
• Region-wise order balance
• Data Migration Scope
• Lots of data elements need to be migrated from the existing legacy
application to ERP
• Large volume data sets
• Data cleaning, identification of obsolete product, customer etc.
• Data in legacy could be erroneous
• should clearly define which data elements need to be migrated and who
will do what
• User Scope
• Estimate number of end users
• Need to be done at project budgeting stage
• Can be derived from legacy application users
• Can be derived from count of supervisory and management staff
• Important to estimated in order to manage authorization
• Technology Scope
• Technology related activities that need to be performed during the project
• Need to have clarity: how many resources he needs to plan for this.
• How much extra load will have to be bearded during implementation to
carry out technology related activities
• Installation of ERP software components in all landscapes

• System administration, including backup and recovery standards

• Setting up of technical transport management

• Sizing the landscape documents for all servers including client strategy

• Server deployment strategy for the ERP for production environment

• System performance monitoring during project lifecycle

 Project Plan
• Development of project plan, input from several stockholders
• Feasible and inline with budget
• Depends on implementation strategy of the company
• Guide to project and monitoring of project
• Develop a plan at high level and then gradually granular to level
breaking it into different work streams.
• Top management is always concerned about high level plan
• Various tools are available
• MS Project
An ERP project plan is composed of several plans like

• Activity, deliverables and milestone plan:

• At what stage, which activities to be done, which deliverables need to be submitted to client by what date

• Resource plan:
• At which stage, how many people of which skill set are needed and for what duration.

• Training plan:
• Schedule of trainings, training contents, etc.

• Testing plan:
• Unit testing integration testing, end user testing and volume testing

• Data migration plan

• Data migration from old system to new system, how and who and during what period

• Change management plan:

• How changes will be communicated, plan for communicating what is happening in the project front to the whole
organization, the frequency of such communication, etc.
 RESOURCE PLAN
• Done after project plan, contain phase wise activity plan
• Resource planning is done accordingly
• Resource plan includes
• Month wise resources needed,
• At client site or at offshore location
• Consulting company side or from the client side.
• Program managers and project managers from both sides
• Integration manager
• Data manager
• Different resources in different phases, no uniformity
 Project Charter
• Project overview:
• ‘As Is’ situation and ‘To Be’ situation, what is expected from the project
• Project scope:
• Scope is a deliverable, what work will be undertaken during the project.
• Project goals and objectives:
• Overall goal that the project is expected to achieve
• Should be aligned to corporate and organizational strategies.
• Project deliverables:
• finalize the deliverables early enough, payments are linked to deliverables.
• Set of deliverables are planned after each phase of the project
• Success of particular phase is measured accordingly
• Business case summary:
• Executive summary of project’s business case.
• Total estimated project cost:
• Rough cut project cost from start to finish.
• Discussed in detail in project pre-implementation chapter.
• Implementation strategy:
• This is about high level implementation strategy a big bang or a phased rollout
approach.
• Project stakeholders:
• listing out the names of the people and organizations having interest in the project.
• Internal and external organization, customer, supplier, vendor, consultants
• Assumptions and constraints:
• Assumptions are items that are believed to be true
• Constraints are items that are beyond the control of the project team and that limit
options
• Risk assessment:
• Risks are the factors that may have a negative impact on the project and managing
risk on an ERP project is crucial to its success.
Project Vision and Mission Statement
• Start with a vision and mission statement articulated by top management.

• Could be a very high level

• Pivotal to this vision is a commitment to contributing in local, national and
international development, concomitantly adhering to the dictates of our social
ethics, traditions and environment.

• OR very simple
• We will deliver the package by 10:30 the next morning
 Project Kickoff
• A formal announcement meeting to present project charter

• Attended by senior management

• Introduction of project team, roles, responsibilities in the project.

• Explain high level project plan, implementation strategy, timeline, project goals
and objectives, and different deliverables at different stages of the project
• Outline key organizational change management goals and objectives

• Excitement, commitment and motivation

 PROJECT RISK MANAGEMENT
• Factors that may have a negative impact ; Management of risk is crucial.
Risk Management is a Five-step Process
• Important to develop a risk management strategy and mitigation plan
• Important to define a risk management process

• Develop a risk assessment tool

• Conduct risk workshops and meetings with key stakeholders

• Document and analyze the implementation risks

• Talk to other organizations that have done similar projects

• fixing cost of implementation

Risk Assessment Tool

• A set of tailored of risk assessment questions

• Addressing key issues that impact the ERP system implementation.

• Need to be an effective mechanism for administering such a tool (i.e. on-line, paper and
pencil survey, interactive technology).
• Risk Workshops
• To understand the root causes of the implementation risks
• Drive towards corrective action.
• Workshop participants are asked questions for each of risks.
• What is behind the concern?
• What does it mean for the project?
• What can we do about it?
• The result in a set of specific actions and assigned tasks

• Periodic Risk Assessment

• Not one time activity, risk can creep at any time in the project life
• Risks need to be assessed in a periodic manner
• Assessment sessions include project updates, administration of the assessment
question set, and open-ended discussion about the ERP
implementation.
• Follow-up risk workshops to develop risk mitigation strategies and action plans