Inside an SAP Business Intelligence Project, Part 1: Best Practices for Planning and Project...

© 2010 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

Inside an SAP Business Intelligence Project, Part 1: Best Practices for Planning and Project Management Dr. Bjarne BergCOMERIT

In This Session …

• Get expert advice on how to budget, scope, and manage an SAP business intelligence project – Ranging from SAP BusinessObjects implementations to leveraging portals

• Hear best practices for writing a solid business case for your BI initiative, defining reasonable scope agreements, creating a rollout strategy, developing budgets, picking the right front-end tools, and creating a project organization that matches scope and delivery plans

3

In This Session … (cont.)

• Walk through real examples of four SAP customers that have implemented SAP BusinessObjects dashboards and cockpits, and learn how to avoid their top 10 project pitfalls, including performance and user interface deployment

• Explore functional specifications and requirements, and glean insight into which reports should remain in SAP ERP and which can be leveraged by your SAP business intelligence and SAP BusinessObjects front-end tools

• Take home best-practice functional specification templates, staffing templates including roles and responsibilities, and decision flow charts for SAP business intelligence projects

4

What We’ll Cover …

• Planning your SAP business intelligence project • Organizing your BI initiative• Top 10 lessons learned by four SAP customers that have

implemented SAP BusinessObjects dashboards• Getting started with your BI project• Wrap-up

5

Planning Your SAP Business Intelligence Project

1. The business case2. Scope agreement3. Milestones4. Steering committee

6

7

Writing the Business Case

• The business case must be aligned with some concrete business benefits

• The best way to write a business case is to align it with one of these areas:

Money

Strategy

Reducing time and effort of delivery

Improved information quality and access for end users

http://www.clker.com/clipart-one-euro-coin.html

8

Business Case Ideas

Users get earlier access to information

Load times in BW are less than traditional,custom- developeddata warehouses

Business users need a high availability solution

Information Access

Users spend less time on reconciling data, and moretime analyzing it

BW is “closer” to the source system, and more accurately reflects data

A substantial portion of the data warehouse effort is spent on reconciling information

Reconciliation Effort

Enables web initiatives to get closer to the source data,both in time and consistency

BW is closely integrated with ERP and can deliver data that reflects the source system at short time intervals

Web delivery requires rapid data delivery of high consistency with the source system

Web strategy

Substantial cost savings, bynot having to redevelop newextract programs for eachSAP upgrade

BW – ERP integration points are maintained and tested by SAP

Updating extract programswhen upgrading ERP is expensive

Cost Avoidance

SAP is responsible for maintenance of the product

Maintaining a custom developed BI solution is complex and expensive

Cost of Ownership

BenefitBI ObservationArea

Information Access

Reconciliation Effort

Web strategy

Cost Avoidance

Cost of Ownership

BenefitSAP BI ObservationArea

Substantial maintenancecost savings

9

Area Observation SAP BI Benefit

Faster Deployment Need to increase time to deliver new applications and enhancements to existing areas

Typical use of 60-80% of predelivered content increases development speed

Reduced development time for new decision support areas

Integrated Products SAP continues to offer new products and modules that the organization might wish to leverage in the future

SAP NetWeaver® BW is the “cornerstone” of SAP’s BI product offerings

Enables closer integration with other SAP modules

Query speed Business users need fast access to their data

Through use of summaries and the SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, the blade architecture lends itself to faster in-memory query performance

Users get the data they need quickly to perform their job functions

More Business Case Examples

10

Area Observation SAP BI Benefit

SAP Strategy It is the organization’s SAP strategy to leverage investments in SAP to the fullest extent, and maximize SAP resource utilization

SAP BI is an SAP product, and is based on standard SAP NetWeaver® technologies (Basis, ABAP, kernels, etc.)

Strategic fit and synergy with SAP. SAP Basis, ABAP, etc., resources can be used across SAP projects, including SAP BI

Tool Standardization

The organization must be able to leverage industry standards to enable business users to access data in a variety of ways

Interfaces such as ODBO and MDX and Java are supported by a variety of major presentation and Web tools. SAP BusinessObjects tools can be integrated rapidly via “native: connections

Simplifies user access to data; expands options for using standard presentation and Web tools or developing your own

Industry Trend The organization’s competitors and some of the organization’s business areas are installing SAP BI

Increased industry resource pool and knowledge of SAP BI

Enables the organization to leverage industry solutions and know-how

Three More Business Case Examples

The Scope Agreement Dimensions

• For the first go-live, keep the scope as small as possible For example, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, G/L, or

COPA• You have only three dimensions to work with, if one of these

dimensions changes, you have to adjust at least one of the others

11

There is a limit to how far you can compress timelines:Brooks law states that "Nine women cannot make a baby in one month“*

Time

Scope

Resources(people, technology,

and money)

* Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Addison-Wesley, 1975)

12

The Scope Agreement — A Discovery Exercise

• Determining the scope is done in a variety of ways, depending on which methodology you employ. It is a complex process involving:

1. Discovery and education 2. Formal communication3. Reviews 4. Final approvals

An SAP BI implementation involves more than black-and-white technical decisions; just because something is technically feasible, doesn’t mean it is wise or desirable from a business perspective.

Source: Gooy_GUI, 2007

13

Defining The Scope Of Your SAP BI Implementation

• First, determine what the business drivers are; Then meet these objectives• Define the scope in terms of what is included, as well as what is not included• Make sure you obtain approval of the scope before you progress any further. All

your work from now on will be based on what is agreed to at this stage.• As part of the written scope agreement, make sure you implement a formal

change request process. This typically includes a benefit-cost estimate for each change request and a formal approval process.

Source: Gooy_GUI, 2007

14

Change Management Process

Change Request form

Complete?No

ReviewRecom-mended?

Submission

Change Request formNo

Yes

Approved?

No

Scheduled

Developed Unit TestedDev. environment

System testedDev. Environment

Integration testedQA environment

Approved?

Approved?

Approved?

Moved to productionNo

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes

IT responsible

Business responsible

Sr. mgmt. responsible

The Change Management Form — Page 1

• To make this process work, you need a formal instrument• The instrument can be online (i.e., a Web page), electronic (Word

document), or a paper-based system• The form should contain at least these fields

15

The front page that the requestor fills out

Requestor Name:Department

Phone number / email

Describe the change requested, be detailed

Why is it needed

How important is it that the change occur? (how would you

manage if this is not done)

TBD When possible

Future release

Date Break-fix (right now)

When is the change needed

Change Request Form

The Change Management Form — Page 2

• This page is used by the system administrator or the project team• The purpose is to have controlled changes that are scheduled and

tested appropriately

1616

The back page that the system admin and approver fill out

Received date:Reviewed by:

Comments/recommendation

Pending Not-Approved Future release

Approved Break-fix (right now)

Approval status:

Approved by:Approved date:

Assigned to:Due date:

Pending Prototyped In QA Tested In Production

Development status:

For internal use only

Do You Have a Plan? The Six Dimensions of BI Management • There are six core global dimensions you must consider before embarking on a

BI project• Project management is important, but it’s only one of these dimensions

Failure to account for the others may result in project failures.

Source: Peter Grottendieck, Siemens

For each dimension, articulate an approach, constraints, limitations, and assumptions before you start your project. 17




18

Organizing your BI initiative

1. Budgeting2. Project team organization3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Rapid Application

Development (RAD)

19

Budgeting Process Steps

1. Size the SAP BI effort based on the scope 2. Prioritize the effort3. Map the effort to the delivery schedule4. Plan for number of resources needed based on the scope,

delivery schedule, and the effort

20

Create the Milestone Plan and Scope Statement first, before attacking the budgeting process

Start the budgeting process by estimating the workload in terms of the development effort. Refine based on the team’s skill experience and skill level

1. Size the SAP BI Effort Based on the Scope — Real Example

21

Customization

Tech. Dev. infocube

Extraction and transforms

Report and roles

Security and scheduling

Web develop-

ment

User support/ planning

Project mgmt and admin

System docs & manuals

Tech infra-structure

Bus. Analysis, training, req.

gathering, change mgmt.

Total Hours

FinancialsL General ledger line item (ODS) 216 229 188 101 132 134 100 79 150 403 1,732M COPA 158 286 153 127 153 152 120 94 180 470 1,893L Prod cost planning released cost

estimates (COPC_C09)216 229 188 101 133 135 100 79 150 403 1,734

M Exploded itemization standard product cost (COPC_C10)

238 286 216 126 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,035

L Cost and allocations (COOM_C02)

216 1144 188 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 2,648

M Cost object controlling (0PC_C01)

238 286 216 137 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,046Order

L Billing 216 229 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,732L Sales order 216 229 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,732L Acct. Rec. (0FIAR_C03) 216 229 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,732

Deliver L Shipment cost details

(0LES_C02)216 229 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,732

L Shipment header (0LES_C11) 216 228 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,731L Stages of shipment (0LES_C12) 216 228 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,731L Delivery data of shipment stages

(0LES_C13)216 228 187 101 132 135 100 79 150 403 1,731

L Delivery service (0SD_C05) 180 229 133 101 132 134 100 79 150 403 1,641Planning and Scheduling

L Material Movements (0IC_C03) 216 457 132 101 132 134 100 79 150 403 1,904M APO Planning 277 832 216 127 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,621M SNP Integration 277 832 216 127 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,621

Manufacturing Processes M Production Orders 277 832 216 127 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,621M Cross Applications 277 832 216 127 153 152 120 94 180 470 2,621

Total Hours 4,298 8,074 3,587 2,110 2,656 2,681 2,040 1,606 3,060 8,126 38,238

Remember that your sizing also has to be based on the team’s experience and skill level.

22

2. Prioritize the Effort

The next step is to prioritize and outline the effort on a strategic timeline

Make sure your sponsor and the business community agree with your delivery schedule

23

3. Use Project Estimates and the Timeline to Create Project Load Plan

There are 480 available work hours per project member per quarter. Knowing this, we can plan the number of team members we need…

24

4. Result: Good Input for the Staffing Costs and Planning

Many companies plan a 60%- 40% mix of internal and external resources for a first go-live. Also, most use $50-$90 per hr for internal budgeting and $90-$170 per hr for external resources.

Number of team members

-

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

qtr 1 qtr 2 qtr 3 qtr 4 qtr 1 qtr 2 qtr 3 qtr 4 qtr 1 qtr 2 qtr 3

Use this information to plan for training, on-boarding, and staffing

This spike in resource needs is due to an overlap in the delivery schedule

Now might be a good time to review that decision

How Tightly Should Multiple BI Projects be Controlled?

Source: The Conference Board Survey

The relationship between control and success according to a conference Board Survey of 89 BI projects.

88% Successful 30% Successful

Loose Cooperation(38%)

Independent(38%)

Tight Central Control(24%)

100% Successful

Coordination of Multiple Business Intelligence Projects

25

26

Six Ways to Organize your BI Project Team

Benefits Risks

1 Single site

2 Distributed analysis

3 Distributed analysis and design

4 Co-located analysis and design

5 Multiple co-located analysis and design

6 Fully distributed development

Option

The more distributed the BI development effort becomes, the more difficult it is to maintain communication and get cohesive requirements.

Example 1 — Small Project Team Organization

27

Four to five team members and normally three to six months duration on each go-live depending on scope

BI Basis and functional SAP ERP support

• These are roles, not positions Sometimes one team member can

fill more than one role

Many companies fail to formally assign roles and responsibilities.

As a result, they have many “jack of all trades” and “masters of none.”

Business AnalystPresentation Developer

Business Team

BI ArchitectETL Developer

Technical Team

Project Manager

Project Sponsor

ETL = Extract, Transform, and Load

Example 2 — Medium Project Team Organization

28

This model scales well to teams of up to 12-15 people

Basis and functional ERP support

8-10 team members and normally 2-4 months duration depending on scope

Project sponsor/ Steering

Committee

Project Manager

SAP BIArchitect

Business Analyst(s)

Extract, Transforms and Loads

Data Management(InfoCubes &

ODS)

Presentation Developer(s)

- cockpits & queries

Sr. Business analyst

Business analyst

Sr. ETL developer

ETL developer

Sr. SAP BI developer

SAP BI developer

Sr. Presentation developer

Presentation developer

Example 3 — Large Project Team Organization

29

BI Basis and functional SAP ERP support

15-30 team members and normally 6-18 months duration between each go-live

Portal Developer(s)

BI Architect

Business Analyst/(sub-team lead)BI DeveloperPresentation Developer(s)ETL Developer

Sales Team


Finance Team


Material Mgmt. Team

Project Manager

Project Sponsor/Steering Committee

In larger teams, you need to create functional teams, instead of the previous technical team models. This is to avoid “islands” of teams that are not really integrated

30

On-Boarding ,Training, and SAP Courses

Ideal Yrs Experience (minimum)

Training days (if new in the

role)

In-house training

daysBW Developer 2+ 15 3-5ETL Developer 3+ 15-20 3-5Presentation Developer 1+ 5-10 3-5Project Manager 5+ 10-15 3-5Business Analysts 5+ 5-10 3-5

Don’t underestimate the value of in-house, hands-on training in addition to formal SAP training classes.

Ref Course Who should take the trainingBW-310 Intro to SAP BI AllBW-305 BI Reporting & Analysis End user support and TrainingBW-350 BI Data Acquisition Data loads and FixesBW-360 BW Performance & Admin System adminBW-361 BW Accelerator System adminBW-365 BW Authorizations Information risk mgmtSAP-330 BW Modeling System admin

31

The User Acceptance Group and Its Role• Create a user acceptance team consisting of five to seven members

from the various business departments or organizations

• Keep the number odd to assist with votes when decisions need to be made. With fewer than 5 members, it can be hard to get enough members present at each meeting

• Make this team the focus of your requirements gathering in the early phase, then let this team perform user acceptance testing during the Realization phase

• Meet with the team at least once a month during realization to refine requirements as you are building, and have something to show them

This approach is hard to execute when also managing scope, but is essential to make sure that the system meets users’ requirements

RAD Approach For Smaller BI and Cockpit Projects

• In Rapid Application Development (RAD), keep the scope focused and use a simple approach

32

In RAD, no functional or technical specs are used in this approach. Over 8-16 weeks, multiple user acceptance sessions are used to refine requirements and multiple prototypes are built (think rapid interactive prototyping).

Activate standard content

Review data quality issues

Create 2-3 sample queries

Load InfoCubeUser

acceptance session

Request for modifications In-

scope?

Rejection

In-futurescope?

Make enhancements

Test

Deploy

Yes

No

No




33

34

Example 1 — Build on a Solid Foundation

• In this company, the data volumes were very high

• Therefore, a set of summary cubes were used instead of building dashboards on top of large InfoProviders

Lessons # 1: Make sure you build dashboards on top of summary cubes and data stores where the volume is small and queries can run fast.

35

Example 1 — Build on a Solid Foundation (cont.)

Lesson #2: Modularize the data and always leverage MultiProviders.

• This reduces data replication, decreases the number of data updates, and makes the data available to the end user faster.

• You can also use the MultiProviders for other summary reports beyond the dashboards.

36

Example 2 — Compare to Plans

Lesson #3: Adding forward looking dashboards that are linked to Business Plans (BP), Rolling Estimates (RE), and Prior Year (PY) makes the dashboard more meaningful.

Lesson #4: Create charts that “predict” where the sales will be each month if the trend continues. This makes the dashboard actionable and tells the users what needs to be done.

37

Example 3 — Provide Numbers, not Just Graphs

Lesson #5: Almost all dashboards should have graphs as well as numbers.

Do not create a visually pleasing dashboard with just images. People are visual as well as numerical oriented.

In this example, users can toggle between tables and graphs. This means that the same information does not consume a large space.

Lesson #6: Users want to see the details without having to log-on to a separate system. It is not advisable to try to cram too much details in a single management cockpit (max. 500-1000 rows).

Instead, create jump-to reports from the dashboard. This can be to Interactive Analysis (SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence ) or to existing BW Web queries.

38

Example 4 — Create Drill Downs from Dashboards

39

Example Four — Online Help and Metadata

Lesson #7: When presenting numbers on charts and complex graphs, you should always provide an online explanation for:

• What the numbers mean• How they are calculated• How you read the graphs

This can be developed inside SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder (formerly Xcelsius®).

Lesson #8: It is hard to build a fast dashboard with many queries and panels without SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator. This provides in-memory processing of queries that is 10-100x faster.

Lesson #9: Pre-running queries into cache via BEx Broadcaster requires more memory than the 200MB default values. Analyze your server and consider increasing the cache to 400MB+.

40

It Is All About Performance, Performance, Performance

Lesson #10: MDX cache is for OLAP Universes, OLAP cache is for BICS connectors used by SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder. Think how you are accessing the data before you performance tune the system and always conduct a stress test before deploying any dashboards.




41

Getting Started

1. Methodology and Functional Specs2. Tool Selection3. Report dispositioning

42

43

Pick a Formal Methodology — You Have Many Choices

• Accelerated SAP (ASAP) methodology is not your only choice• Even though they are harder to manage on a global project due to

long communication lines, consider RAD, JAD, or EP based on the time to delivery and impact of failure

Joint Application Design(JAD)

Rapid Application Development(RAD)

Extreme Programming(EP)

System development Lifecycle based methodologies

(SDLC)

Impact of FailureLow High

Low

High

Time to Delivery

When to Select Different Methodologies

Source: Bjarne Berg, Data Management Review 2004

Look at what your organizational partners have done.

You may know more about RAD than you think!

Monitoring BI Quality and Formal Approval Process: Example

44

Create Functional specs

Peer Review

Complete?

Complete?

Create Technical specs

Peer Review

Complete?

Complete?Structured

walkthrough

Approved?

Configuration

Unit Testing

Integration Testing

System Testing

Structured walkthrough

Approved?

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Sample Info Request Form

• Documents requirements in a standardized format and allows for a large comment section

• Prioritizes requirements• Consolidates requirements• Supports follow-up

discussions and reviews

Sample Info Request Form (cont.)

• Other uses Post the form on the

intranet, thereby giving stakeholders an easy way to communicate with the project team

Use the Comment section for language and security requirements, or add a separate section for this

Note the section for dispositioning the requirement

46

What Dashboard and Cockpit Tool to Select

• All SAP tools have strength and weaknesses• This is a subjective summary of each of the major dashboard

tools

47

End User

Power User Author

IT Developer Graphing Navigation

External data

External web

services Simplicity OLAPAd-Hoc

queryingWeb Application DesignerDashboard Designer (Xcelsius)

Visual Composer

Interactive Analysis (WebI)

CapabilitiesDevelopmentTool

Long-term

Stategy

SAP's Vision — Who Should Do What … ..

• SAP has a vision of which SAP BusinessObjects tools are appropriate for the different user groups

48Source: SAP

49

cuTeam starts by reviewing documentation tool for

documentation completeness

D1Is report

documentation complete?

Request additional input from Business

Team member

Responsible Team member

acquires/documents additional information

D2Is this

an Intraday report?

D3Significant

numberof users?

D4 Is the report

system resource

intensive?

D5Does

Standard ERPcontentexist?

D6Does

Standard BWcontentexist?

D7Is it less

expensive tocreate in

ERP?

ERP is selected asReporting Tool

and documentedin doc. tool

BW is selected asReporting Tool anddocumented in doc.

tool

BW is selected asReporting Tooland documented

in the documentation tool

BW is selected asreporting tool and ChangeRequest is submitted ifthe scope changed




and documented

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

D2.5 Does data exist

in "in-scope" modelsInfocube/ODS

No

Yes

No

D1a Is this a true

reportingneed

Yes

No Communicate tobus. leader

A2Total Cost ofOwnership

Analysis

D8Is BI costeffective?

Yes

No

YesYes



D9ERP Tool

SelectionProcess

No

BW is selected asReporting Tool anddocumented in doc.

tool

StandardERP

ABAP/Custom

ReportWriter

OtherQuery

Review requirements and identifycorresponding Data Model (InfoCube/ODS)

Communicate finaldisposition





ERP team make final disposition



BW Team to forward completed detailed report specifications based on selected Reporting Tool - BI or ERP

A3Sub-Process Report Consolidation &eliminate if appropriate (winnowing)

A4 Baseline reports

An example of how to decide which reports should be in ERP or the legacy system (refer to printed version)




50

51

Resources

• Evan Delodder and Ray Li, Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius: Practical Guide, SAP PRESS, 1st Edition; (September 15, 2010)

• Boris Otto and Jörg Wolter, Implementing SAP Customer Competence Center, SAP PRESS, 1st edition; 1st edition (December 1, 2008)

• by Frank K. Wolf and Stefan Yamada, Data Modeling in SAP NetWeaver BW 7.1, SAP PRESS, 1st Edition; (August 1, 2010)

7 Key Points to Take Home

• Do not jump into a dashboard project. Create a formal strategy, plan, budgets, and scope, and train your staff before you start.

• Have a formal organization, but do not overstaff. Skills are more important than numbers.

• Spend serious time on the backend BI system. Not all systems are ready for dashboards – Performance is essential.

• Consider SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator as part of your dashboard project.

• Rollout interactive analysis (SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence) as part of the dashboard project – Details are important and users want drill-down capabilities.

• Make the first rollout short and focused (12-16 weeks max).• Use Rapid Application Development (RAD) as you methodology –

Anything else does not make sense!52

53

Your Turn!

How to contact me:Dr. Berg

[email protected]

54

DisclaimerSAP, ERP, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet™®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

Inside an SAP Business Intelligence Project, Part 1: Best Practices for Planning and Project...

Documents

Transcript of Inside an SAP Business Intelligence Project, Part 1: Best Practices for Planning and Project...