In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations increasingly seek to enhance their SAP implementations by adopting agile methodologies. The agile method is a flexible, iterative approach to project management and software development that contrasts with the traditional waterfall methodology by emphasizing adaptability and ongoing feedback. Agile methodology provides a way to manage and execute SAP projects, offering benefits such as faster delivery and improved stakeholder collaboration. SAP agile development offers a collaborative and iterative approach that helps SAP teams navigate the complexities of large-scale projects while delivering customer value efficiently. The SAP agile methodology is a step-by-step process that divides complex SAP deployments into sprints, enabling continuous refinement and flexibility throughout the project lifecycle. Over the past three years, our experience working with a multinational client on one of the larger projects in SAP deployments globally has highlighted key insights into successfully integrating agile practices within the SAP landscape. This article explores how agile principles and frameworks can be effectively applied to SAP projects, overcoming traditional challenges and driving continuous improvement. The SAP Activate methodology is another flexible framework for deploying SAP products, and it can be compared to agile approaches to help organizations select the most suitable project deployment method.
Introduction to Agile Development
Agile development is transforming the way SAP projects are delivered by emphasizing adaptability, collaboration, and a relentless focus on customer value. Unlike traditional software development approaches, agile methodologies break work into smaller, manageable increments, allowing SAP teams to deliver working software early and often. This iterative development cycle enables teams to respond rapidly to shifting business needs, ensuring that solutions remain aligned with evolving requirements.
By embracing agile principles—such as prioritizing individuals and interactions, fostering customer collaboration, and welcoming change—SAP teams can reduce project risk and accelerate time-to-value. Agile development empowers SAP teams to continuously refine their solutions, resulting in higher quality outcomes and greater satisfaction for both business stakeholders and end users. For organizations seeking to maximise the impact of their SAP projects, adopting agile methodologies is a proven way to deliver solutions that truly meet business needs.
Key Insights from Using Agile in SAP Deployments
Agile Contracting with Suppliers
Large SAP projects often require augmenting internal capabilities by partnering with external suppliers or consultants. To ensure a cohesive and unified agile approach, it is crucial to define clear responsibilities and expectations in the contracting phase. This includes specifying what the customer’s obligations are, such as training SAP teams in agile practices, and delineating shared responsibilities like defining success measures collaboratively. A phased approach can be used to divide SAP migrations or supplier engagements into incremental phases, facilitating smoother transitions and enabling continuous improvement based on ongoing feedback. Equally important is clarifying the partner’s role, which might involve outlining the preliminary scope and maintaining transparency about resource availability. Establishing these clear boundaries and commitments fosters a collaborative approach that aligns all stakeholders toward common project goals and desired outcomes.
Organise Around Value
Traditional SAP deployments frequently suffer from siloed handoffs between functional teams—moving work sequentially from business analysts to development, testing, and deployment. To counter this, organizing teams around value streams and value flows is highly effective. Value streams represent the end-to-end processes through which business value is generated, such as Order to Cash or Make to Deploy. These streams can be broken down into smaller sub-streams and flows, which provide natural boundaries for forming cross-functional agile teams.
By structuring SAP teams around these value streams, organizations can create focused Scrum teams that own specific segments of the business process. For example, a Sub-flow Lead can act as the product owner, supported by a Scrum Master and a development team capable of delivering WRICEFs (Workflow, Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Enhancements, Forms) end to end. This agile framework empowers SAP teams to work collaboratively, maintain a healthy product backlog, and deliver working software iteratively. Hiring an experienced agile coach can further ensure teams practice good Scrum, maintain stable team dynamics, and deliver value frequently.
Add Predictability with Synchronization and Alignment
Managing hundreds of team members across multiple locations and time zones requires a scalable agile framework. In our SAP agile development experience, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) proved invaluable for synchronizing efforts and enhancing predictability. SAFe® provides structure through Program Increments (PIs), typically spanning 12 weeks, which balance the need for long-term planning with the flexibility to adapt to changing project requirements.
PI Planning events, whether conducted in person or virtually, enable agile teams to collaborate on backlog management and emphasise the importance of tracking dependencies. Automated tools for tracking dependencies, such as ActiveControl, are essential for coordinating multiple teams working on shared code bases and ensuring smooth, conflict-free deployments. Relying on manual methods like spreadsheets and emails is insufficient for managing the complexity of SAP deployments. This alignment fosters transparency and coordination among project managers, product owners, and Scrum Masters, ensuring that the entire SAP project team moves cohesively toward project goals. By intentionally tailoring SAFe® to fit the SAP environment, organizations can harness its benefits without becoming overly prescriptive, supporting a hybrid approach that blends agile methods with traditional project management where necessary.
Don’t Stop Sprinting
A common misconception in SAP agile development is that sprinting only applies during the initial development phase. Traditional SAP projects often follow a waterfall lifecycle—development, configuration, system integration testing (SIT), user acceptance testing (UAT), and deployment. However, continuing the agile approach beyond development is essential for iterative improvement and continuous refinement.
Maintaining short, iterative feedback loops through sprint planning and regular retrospectives after development phases helps SAP teams adapt quickly to changing business needs and customer expectations. The sprint review, held at the end of each sprint, is a collaborative meeting where the team inspects completed work and gathers feedback. Regular sprint reviews foster transparency, encourage stakeholder feedback, and drive continuous improvement during SAP project implementations. Planning for the next sprint during sprint planning and review sessions is crucial to maintain project momentum and ensure ongoing process improvement. This ongoing sprinting supports continuous improvement and ensures that the SAP solutions delivered remain aligned with real-time insights and evolving project requirements. Agile software development in SAP projects promotes responsiveness and flexibility, which are critical for successful implementation in modern business environments.
Data-Driven Deployment
A data-driven mindset is vital for managing complex SAP deployments effectively. Starting with the end in mind, project teams should define comprehensive end-to-end scenarios that include detailed narratives and the necessary data for each Program Increment. These scenarios, akin to Epics in SAFe®, can be decomposed into Features and user stories that guide the development lifecycle. A user story is a specific customer or user requirement that helps guide SAP development and improves transparency throughout the project.
Focusing on user stories enables SAP consultants and agile teams to prioritise work based on customer value rather than simply chasing metrics like the number of WRICEFs or user stories completed. This approach ensures that the SAP project team remains focused on delivering working software that meets business processes and customer expectations. During deployment and testing, it is important to integrate SAP with other systems to improve agility and reduce bottlenecks. Non-SAP applications and resources are often involved in testing, development, and project management, so coordinating these non-SAP components with SAP is essential for successful project delivery. By embedding quality early in the development cycle and leveraging automation tools where appropriate, SAP teams can enhance the reliability and speed of deployments.
Agile Tools and Technologies
The success of agile development in SAP projects is closely tied to the effective use of agile tools and technologies. These tools provide SAP teams with the structure and visibility needed to manage complex project management tasks, facilitate real-time collaboration, and track progress throughout the development lifecycle. Popular agile project management tools like Jira, Trello, and Asana help teams organize their product backlog, manage user stories, and coordinate sprint planning across distributed teams.
For SAP-specific needs, solutions such as SAP Solution Manager and SAP Cloud ALM offer integrated support for agile practices, enabling seamless alignment between business processes and technical delivery. Automation tools like ActiveControl further enhance SAP development by automating testing and deployment tasks, reducing manual errors, and increasing overall efficiency. By leveraging these agile tools and technologies, SAP teams can streamline their workflows, improve communication, and deliver high-quality SAP solutions faster and more reliably.
Measuring Agile Success
To ensure that agile practices are delivering real value in SAP projects, it’s essential to measure progress and outcomes using meaningful metrics. Agile teams often rely on metrics such as velocity, burn-down charts, and customer satisfaction scores to gauge their effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement. In the context of SAP projects, tracking key performance indicators like time-to-market, defect density, and customer satisfaction provides valuable insights into how well the team is meeting customer needs and business objectives.
Regularly reviewing these metrics enables SAP teams to adapt their agile practices, address bottlenecks, and continuously enhance the quality of their solutions. By focusing on outcomes that matter—such as delivering working software that aligns with business needs—SAP teams can ensure that their agile efforts translate into tangible benefits for customers and stakeholders.
Scaling Agile in SAP
As SAP projects grow in size and complexity, scaling agile practices becomes a critical challenge. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) offers a robust approach for extending agile development across large, multi-team SAP projects, providing the structure needed to coordinate efforts and maintain alignment with business goals. By adopting SAFe, SAP teams can synchronise their work, manage dependencies, and ensure consistent delivery of value across the entire project lifecycle.
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is another agile framework that supports SAP teams in scaling their agile practices by introducing a disciplined, yet flexible, approach to software development. Both SAFe and DAD help SAP teams maintain the core benefits of agile—such as flexibility, collaboration, and customer focus—while addressing the unique challenges of large-scale SAP implementations. By leveraging these frameworks, organizations can successfully scale agile in SAP environments, ensuring that even the most complex projects deliver high-quality results that meet business needs.
When in Doubt, Refer to Agile Principles
Agile principles serve as a compass when navigating challenges in SAP agile development. Whenever project teams encounter roadblocks or uncertainty, revisiting the Agile Manifesto’s principles can help evaluate whether proposed solutions align with core values such as customer collaboration, responding to change, and delivering working software frequently. It is especially important to consider the unique challenges of developing, maintaining, and deploying changes within SAP systems, where agility and risk management are critical factors. Understanding the trade-offs involved in deviating from these principles allows project leadership and business leaders to make informed decisions that balance agility with the realities of SAP implementations.
The insights shared here apply not only to SAP projects but also to any traditional or hybrid project seeking to incorporate agile ways of working. By embracing a holistic approach that combines agile frameworks, disciplined agile delivery, and lean principles, many organizations can improve their SAP project outcomes and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
For SAP customers and project managers looking to enhance their SAP implementations with agile methodologies, tailored agile consultancy services can provide the expertise and coaching needed to succeed. Engaging agile coaches and adopting a collaborative, value-driven mindset will empower SAP teams to deliver successful implementations that meet both immediate project goals and long-term business needs.
By integrating agile principles and frameworks such as Scrum and SAFe® into SAP agile development, organizations can transform traditional SAP projects into dynamic, customer-focused initiatives. This agile approach not only increases transparency and predictability but also enables SAP teams to adapt quickly to evolving requirements, ultimately driving successful SAP deployments that deliver real value.
