SAP, AFS, Developments and lean manufacturing
Interesting topic for a post isn’t it? What all these have to do in the context of SAP. OK we will go little deeper into this. SAP is a giant software which can cater to any clients need regardless of their industry, size or the power to purchase. But always there are some requirements which will be better fulfilled by doing some adjustments to the software. These adjustments can come in two ways. This can be a configuration change or a development. In an industry which has many influential factors and has lesser predictability there are more chances for continuous changes. Most of the times although the conceptual business models remain the same, application will vary. This might trigger different way of capturing data or reporting for an example. Apparel and Footwear Industry is certainly one of these kinds.
You might have seen in my profile I introduce myself as a lean thinker. So I am very interested in lean and its applications. One of such applications is in software industry. Especially when it comes to SAP developments people have the experiences of long timelines and complex developments. But is this the actual fact, or is it the approach we take to develop the programs. If I go through many of the developments I think which were failures they had one or more of the below features;
Give all the requirements before the development start approach. – This will put the customer in discomfort. He knows if he misses something it can backfire at him. So the normal customer behavior is to add all the possibilities to their requirements without checking the necessity for it. So the development gets complex. It gets costly. Data entry and maintenance going to be very difficult even if the development comes through at all. Most of the times this approach takes months of development time, huge amount of testing time and implementing time. But after some time people give it up making the effort a failure.
We have planned; no changes can be accepted approach – This is the next level of the above approach. People will refine their requirements based on the experiences with the time. More time between the requirement capture and delivery, more chances for the change requests. If we are not in a mood to listen to these requirements which often are very important for the successful operation of the software, the end result would be a failure in operation.
People oriented development requirements – People give their requirements and when the person responsible changes the requirement will also be changed. This problem is very prominent for the developments which will take long time.
Having many unfinished developments or an inventory of developments – This will frustrated the customer since they do not see any output for longer time periods. On the other hand we waste actual implementation and on the field testing time of the software.
Lean concepts can be applied in this software development context to avoid most of these problems. This requires a huge shift in thinking patterns and the processes associated. Some times your bellowed documentation steps in the development cycle will be minimized for an example.
Easiest way to overcome most of these problems is to deliver the developments in small and incremental steps continuously. I call this as the “Just In Time software development approach”. Since this will reduce the time taken to in the development cycle, user gets what he wants quicker. On the other hand there is no need for him to give all the requirements at once. This will reduce the complexity involved in development and greatly reduce the combinations in testing. So development will be much more effective and efficient, testing will be very accurate and the implementation will happen in shorter period. Developments will be tested in actual scenarios and hence incremental changes can take place subsequently. End users will be familiar with the developments and change management will be much easier.
In an apparel and footwear scenario changes happen very frequently in the business. So SAP AFS consultants should be able to keep the phase up with these changes and need to figure out the ways in delivering the developments quicker, simpler ways. Lean concepts can help in achieving this objective. In my future posts I will discuss how you can use these concepts in many other areas including reduction of project cycle time.
You might have seen in my profile I introduce myself as a lean thinker. So I am very interested in lean and its applications. One of such applications is in software industry. Especially when it comes to SAP developments people have the experiences of long timelines and complex developments. But is this the actual fact, or is it the approach we take to develop the programs. If I go through many of the developments I think which were failures they had one or more of the below features;
Give all the requirements before the development start approach. – This will put the customer in discomfort. He knows if he misses something it can backfire at him. So the normal customer behavior is to add all the possibilities to their requirements without checking the necessity for it. So the development gets complex. It gets costly. Data entry and maintenance going to be very difficult even if the development comes through at all. Most of the times this approach takes months of development time, huge amount of testing time and implementing time. But after some time people give it up making the effort a failure.
We have planned; no changes can be accepted approach – This is the next level of the above approach. People will refine their requirements based on the experiences with the time. More time between the requirement capture and delivery, more chances for the change requests. If we are not in a mood to listen to these requirements which often are very important for the successful operation of the software, the end result would be a failure in operation.
People oriented development requirements – People give their requirements and when the person responsible changes the requirement will also be changed. This problem is very prominent for the developments which will take long time.
Having many unfinished developments or an inventory of developments – This will frustrated the customer since they do not see any output for longer time periods. On the other hand we waste actual implementation and on the field testing time of the software.
Lean concepts can be applied in this software development context to avoid most of these problems. This requires a huge shift in thinking patterns and the processes associated. Some times your bellowed documentation steps in the development cycle will be minimized for an example.
Easiest way to overcome most of these problems is to deliver the developments in small and incremental steps continuously. I call this as the “Just In Time software development approach”. Since this will reduce the time taken to in the development cycle, user gets what he wants quicker. On the other hand there is no need for him to give all the requirements at once. This will reduce the complexity involved in development and greatly reduce the combinations in testing. So development will be much more effective and efficient, testing will be very accurate and the implementation will happen in shorter period. Developments will be tested in actual scenarios and hence incremental changes can take place subsequently. End users will be familiar with the developments and change management will be much easier.
In an apparel and footwear scenario changes happen very frequently in the business. So SAP AFS consultants should be able to keep the phase up with these changes and need to figure out the ways in delivering the developments quicker, simpler ways. Lean concepts can help in achieving this objective. In my future posts I will discuss how you can use these concepts in many other areas including reduction of project cycle time.
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