Across the project lifecycle

SAP Activate, SAP's implementation methodology, runs through six phases: Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy and Run. Quality gates at the end of phases check that the project is ready to move on. A process owner has distinct duties in each phase, and the project will not succeed if they appear only at the start and the end.

Discover and Prepare: setting up to succeed

In Discover, the company decides why it is changing and what value it expects. Process owners should shape the process goals, such as cutting days sales outstanding or reducing manual billing corrections, because those goals later become the KPIs they are measured on. In Prepare, the project is mobilized: the process owner confirms their decision rights, nominates key users and secures their time, and agrees how design decisions will be recorded. A project that starts Explore without named, available process owners usually discovers it in the first fit-to-standard workshop.

Quality gates at phase ends are a natural moment for the process owner to confirm readiness for their processes. A gate is only meaningful if the owner has looked at the evidence; a gate passed by the project manager alone checks the plan, not the process.

Explore: the design decisions

Explore is where the process owner makes the most important decisions. In fit-to-standard workshops, consultants demonstrate SAP's standard process, typically from SAP Best Practices scope items, and the business identifies where it fits and where there are gaps. For each gap, the process owner decides: adapt the business to the standard, use configuration, or approve an extension with a business case. Those decisions shape cost, upgrade effort and risk for years. The output, the agreed process design and the list of approved deviations, needs the process owner's approval before Realize builds it.

Realize: staying engaged

Realize is long and detailed, and process owners often disappear into their day jobs. That is when open design questions pile up, and consultants start making business decisions by default. Agree a weekly slot for decisions. Review integration test results for your processes, not just pass rates: are the scenarios the ones the business needs? Approve the data rules for migration. At the end, sign user acceptance testing for your processes based on evidence.

Deploy: cutover and go/no-go

In Deploy, the process owner approves the business cutover approach for their area (freeze rules, catch-up), accepts migrated data with exceptions listed, and gives input to the go/no-go decision. After go-live they sign the business side of cutover. Each of these is a separate course in the Academy; here the point is that they are the process owner's signatures, not the project manager's.

Run: the job continues

Go-live hands the process owner a running system that will keep changing. Duties shift from design to monitoring and improvement: watch KPIs, prioritize change requests, approve releases and upgrades, and keep the RACI and controls current. The next lesson covers the governance forum that organizes this.