What Are My Responsibilities?
Shared responsibilities is one of the challenges of SAP Data Management. Unfortunately, the principle of unambiguous roles and responsibilities just doesn’t work here.
Why? Because multiple groups must collaborate to the outcome of properly designed, converted, cleansed and verified data:
- The Data Team – accountable for making the overall process of data migration and cleansing work within the project timeline. This team may also be responsible for establishing Data Governance.
- Functional or Process teams – accountable for the data design. This includes determining the appropriate types of content in conjunction with the business process and solution design.
- Business data owners – responsible for the data itself. This translates into definition of transformations and providing data cleansing and enrichment content. As a rule, they also sign off on the loaded data.
Project Dysfunction
For people in these roles, this is not simple to understand. Until they do, there is likely to be confusion and delay in progress – in short: project dysfunction.
How do you resolve or prevent the impact of this complexity?
- Don’t assume it will sort itself out. It will take effort and perseverance by program leaders to get all groups to understand how they will work together.
- Create a cross-team project work plan for the data related work. Tasks that require collaboration must show as accomplishments for all teams involved when completed. If behind, they should show as behind for all.
- Establish a data score card appropriate for the project phase.
Solving SAP Data Management Shared Responsibilities
As a program leader, understanding the dynamic of shared responsibilities and investing time in making it work is essential. And it must be done early in the project. As a guideline: if not in control at the half way point between launch Integration Test Cycle 1, you’re in trouble. Data will likely become a cause for project delay. Indications of Data being in control could be:
- Data conversion scope for each test cycle is well defined, plausible and understood across teams.
- Functional, business and data teams are working together against one plan.
- Functional and data teams are delivering useful functional specifications for data conversions. This in spite of unknowns and open questions.
- The data team reports status, not just on their own progress, but also on data tasks of functional and business teams. If the reported status is Green, that should be a red flag for the program manager.
In a high paced systems integration project, Data will rarely be green. But with a bit of work, the shared responsibilities of the SAP Data Management work can be controlled and managed towards success.
If the above resonates and you need more input: make an appointment for free, no obligations consultation session or drop us a line.