I recently switched from a Windows laptop to the MacBook Air by Apple. I was a Mac fan since the original little Macs that I used in college in the 80’s. In the early 90’s I even had the Powerbook - remember that dark gray clamshell portable Mac with the trackball? And then when I started consulting, I went with Windows laptops - it worked better with the SAP software and it fit into the corporate networks of my clients. But I really missed the Mac design; it just worked.
Fast forward to 2011, and my whole family has gone Apple - iPhones, Macbooks, Apple TV’s, Time Capsules and so on. Everyone except me - I’m still working with my 5 year old Windows laptop. My older son, pretty much an Apple geek (and I’m so proud of that!), reminds me that I can actually run Windows on a Mac if it’s ever needed. I see how easily their MacBooks work, how well they integrate with networks, with everything. They just work. So this summer, I got the new MacBook Air laptop. And I love it! Why do I love it? It’s light, powerful, functional, and it just works without hassle.
This is an SAP HR podcast though; what do MacBooks have to do with that? Well, there’s a good lesson here - hang in there with me. One big reason the Apple products are becoming so popular is because of their design quality. Design isn’t just how the products look; in fact, I think design is all about how things work. In most cases, the way they look is a product of how they work. Form follows function, I suppose. Apple pours lots of money into ‘how things work.’
I think with SAP HR projects, we don’t put enough emphasis on design - on how this thing is supposed to work. Design, in SAP HR projects, often gets cut short. We are eager to move into construction - let’s build this thing! Now, I’m all for prototyping and iterative development practices, but that doesn’t mean we can short-cut the design. Not at all! I am saying that when we put the right effort and resources into design, we will get a much better end result.
Better design means fewer errors later in the project. Better design means fewer change requests, it also leads to more consistency which further leads to easier training and a better user experience. Better design means less ‘design by discovery’ later in the project when we are constructing and unit testing. Better design means we will have fewer errors when we get to system integration testing, user acceptance testing and even parallel payroll testing. Yes, payroll also benefits from good design practices. Better design means our data model easily supports our process, reporting and authorization requirements.
So why isn’t there enough emphasis on good design practices for SAP HR projects? Here are a couple reasons though I’m sure we could all think of more. First, I think that too often, we don’t have the right resources involved in the design, or ‘blueprinting’, stage. We need business partners who know what they want and can make decisions about how the work is done. We also need consultants who are conversant and knowledgable in both the system and the business processes. And we need a clear focus on getting to deliverables - it’s far too easy to get into endless loops at this stage. Good design requires the right people who can commit their time to the task.
Second, too often we accept poor or incomplete design so that we can make the deadline, saying that we will work it out later. Whenever we say ‘we can work that out later’ we need to be really sure about the impact of that on other areas of the project and the availability of the resources we will have ‘later’. Often, ‘later’ we are all focused on other deadlines, so that design that we said we would do ‘later’ gets compromised. Then we don’t have time to come back and do it the right way, and we end up with something that doesn’t quite work right.
So for your next SAP HR project, consider how you’re going to do the design stage. Do you have the right people in it? Are you focused on the deliverables? How will you ensure you get good, complete designs? Good design leads to good products - whether it’s a MacBook or an SAP HR implementation.