ASAP methodology aids in designing an efficient SAP implementation optimizing the available resources – time, money and human resources – using proven design principles. ASAP in principle closely align with Waterfall Model.

ASAP or Accelerated SAP comprises of five phases on a high level –

  1. Project Preparation – Identify the necessary pieces of the implementation like project objectives, architecture, resources, management etc.
  2. Business Blueprint – Based on the objectives, identify the processes and consume all the available information to define future processes and requirements. Clarity about business is of utmost importance.
  3. Project Realization –  Based on the identified requirement, baseline configuration/development is put in place and is followed by fine-tuning according to specific business scenarios that might need an exception to the baseline configuration/development. After the configuration/development is done, the testing is performed to ensure that requirements and end-product are in sync. It is performed in Development and Quality Systems.
  4. Final Preparation – This phase continues from where the previous phase ends. It includes more live-like testing to ensure that in the real world the system behaves as per expectation. It includes involvement from different stakeholders across systems and testing with a reasonably real-world load. It is generally performed in Quality Systems. User training is also included in this phase.
  5. Go-Live And Support – Once the system is adequately tested, changes are moved to production and any issues are duly resolved in the Support/Maintenance phase.

Some people also include Operation/Maintenance as a concluding part of the process where a system is maintained after the support phase is over. This article limited the scope to the implementation part only. Maintenance is usually considered seperately.

~S