ASAP Methodology

Concept:
ASAP stands for Accelerated SAP methodology, where it’s an important SDLC (Software
development life cycle) software to be used to implementation of projects.

who ever is using SAP they should follow the ASAP methodology process for the implementation
process, its an SAP own and best methodology to follow to cutdown the costs.

SAP implementation process takes long time and it requires many department manpower along
with lot of efforts to understand the AS-IS and TO-BE process to implement and satisfy the clients.

 It will be very risky if the proper plan is not determined to implement, as this purpose starting all
the managers and department heads will involve making sure everything is I proper way by
following ASAP methodology process.

ASAP methodology is a roadmap for the process, where consultant/managers should follow there
guidelines as per ASAP methodology, Project management team will be taking care of smooth
functionality of the process by updating to clients. ASAP methodology consists several phases that
included in SDLC as mentioned above, here it divides the ASAP methodology phases and marks
time for each phase and it divides the work as per the modules (SD/MM/PP/QM)

Each phase will be called as Milestone and every milestone needs documents that we have done
and gets that approved from clients accordingly.

ASAP methodology provides guidelines and roadmap for implementation/Enhancement

/Customization that requires as per the project support.

Phases of ASAP Methodology:

1.Project Preparation
2.Business Blueprint
3.Realization
4.Final Preparation
5.Go Live
6.Production support/Post-production
We have all the 6 phases, which are important to implement as per the process, we are discuss in
detail of all the phases.

Introduction to client and bidding for project:

Before all these 6 phases, whoever is interested to move to SAP software, then they will be
approaching the software company directly to buy the software.

Note: Once they have bought the software after that client use to bid for the project implementation
with several companies, bidding happens in terms of price and time taking to finish the project.

Note 2: There will be one more bidding with service companies for production support, here
Implementation and production support clients are different by 90%, because of some privacy and
quality purpose 2 biddings and 2 clients will get selected and given the project as per that.

1.Project Preparation:

Once the client has been decided on this implementation partner, this 1st phase will start and here
they will decide on Landscape requirements first.

Kick of meetings, Scope and out of scope modules will be discussed for implementation.

Maintain on server Information like how many servers required and how many test clients required
in each server like we have unit test and integration testing.

Even in quality and production we can have different clients as per the requirements, suppose big
MNC company they may have 6 production clients in production server and accordingly they will
have 6 clients in development server, so that independent requirements can be enabled as per the
client and no need to depend on other clients.

Project cost and resources required from how many modules are there for your requirements and
each module contains members to complete the whole process.

All the above requirements will be discussed by the higher management (managers and business
members) where few from client and few from organization who is implementing.

Project management team (PM) will studies the organization requirements with respect to
interfaces, how many interfaces required and present process and requirement of interfaces. Here
we will study all possible things and their process called as AS-IS.

Timeline will be for this process in 2-3 Months

2.Business Blueprint

This is very important phase in the business, where functional consultants will take care of gaps by
finding as-is process to to-be process and complications that is possible with SAP if not interacting
with ABAP to develop those configurations, so all these things are handled in this phase.
If any requirement is not possible with SAP then ABAP’er will try to do enhancement and this
scenario will be in GAP analysis, same like this there will be many cases where GAP analysis will
come into picture to fill the process and mention the client that this is the gap between your process
and to-be process.

What are the integrations required with other departments like with MM-FI, MM-SD, MM-PP and
MM-QM

Interfaces/what kind of interfaces is present, so as per that what methodology should be used for
processing.

Functional consultants will work first with all functional requirements and once this is done then if
any gaps and development required the technical consultant will come into picture.

Testing team will be testing all the configurations prepared.

Based on As-Is and To-be documents we will create BBP document and get it signed from clients.
This phase will take 2-3 months.

Example: in the old process, if you are Oracle tool then there will be price indicator increase or
decrease option shown by the system but in SAP we don’t have that functionality.

So, this will be maintained in as GAP and mentioned in the BBP document and gets signed that -by
ABAP we will do this customization (Refer FRICWE concept)

3.Realization phase:

This is phase where all functional consultants carry out there customization and even development
also done if required for customization, so all the customizations/integrations/interfaces are
completed- all back end SPRO settings and everything will be moved to quality server by basis
team- All testing’s for the TR’s will be done in Quality server.

All the integration testing and unit testing takes place in this phase.

BPP -Business process procedure has been created in this phase

UAT will be taken from superuser with signed.

This phase will take 2 months.

4.Final Preparation phase:

Final preparation is the phase where we will move all the TR’s will be moved to production and
user manuals are created by taking UAT from super users and cut over activities like master data
uploading for material and vendor and initial entry of stock in inventory.

UAT-User acceptance test- which will be done by power users like is it working, or any issues
related to configuration.

Training to the end users related to the process.

After the final preparation phase, we should make sure only production activities running smoothly
without major interruptions.

Testing of every phase and UAT manuals/ cut over plans needs to be approved in this phase where
data uploading by using LSMW and BAPI

Knowledge transfer and documentation of all process with UAT documents.

This phase will take 2-3 months

5.Pre-Golive Phase:

Legacy system should be stopped to use in this phase

Preparing all the data and ensuring all the data has been migrated and if anything, pending from
LSMW to BAPI, should be completed and inventory data and defining class/characteristics for
release procedure, number ranges for the document types and everything will be done in
production server.

Ensure all the TR’s are moved to production and interfaces are working properly for the monitoring
purpose.

This will take 1-2 months to complete

6.Postproduction support:

In this phase we will be resolving queries related to purchasing and if required giving trainings to
end users.