Last post’s trailing comment was – can we use Scrum to make Implementation quicker/better? In this post, I will focus on the ‘better’ part and leave ‘quicker’ part to the client. This is purely based on personal experience and discussions with peers and seniors.

In SAP Implementation, objects are divided into RICEFs and during initial phase itself, it is important to identify each RICEF as a set of features rather than a product. This will enable the Product Owner to update the Product Backlog accordingly prioritizing high priority RICEF over low priority ones. Since the implementation of SAP requires cohesive design/framework, it is difficult to completely let go the design phase of the development. However, finer design details might be left out for sprints rather than guessing at the outset.

In SAP, testing is usually done at multiple levels – unit testing, functional testing in Dev and QA, integration testing, UAT, etc. – and a feature cannot be treated as Done unless it moves to Production. This creates a problem because last few phases of testing happen at the rear end of the project. The way around is to treat Quality and higher levels of testing as a feature rather than a component. This allows more flexibility and ensure objects are carefully tested.

Scrum can improve the quality of development and can create a product quicker than expected. This allows more intensive integration testing and a detailed UAT which is a hallmark of a quality development.

~S