Lesson 1 of 5
Readiness dimensions
10 min
The go/no-go decision is the most visible decision a process owner makes on an SAP program. It is also the one most often made on gut feel, late at night, with a steering committee that wants to hear "go." This course gives you a way to make it on evidence. It starts by splitting readiness into five dimensions, each with a threshold agreed well before the meeting.
Five dimensions of readiness
In SAP Activate, the go-live decision falls at the end of the Deploy phase, after integration and user acceptance testing and the cutover rehearsals. SAP's own onboarding material describes go-live acceptance criteria as predefined conditions that must be met before launch, with examples such as test completion rates, the number of users trained, the review of open support cases by priority, and validation of migrated data. The point is in the word predefined: the criteria are agreed in advance, not invented in the meeting.
Setting thresholds
For each dimension, write one to three criteria with a clear threshold. Make them measurable, the same way as acceptance criteria. Here is Contoso's set for order-to-cash:
| Dimension | Criterion | Threshold for "go" |
|---|---|---|
| Process | UAT scenarios executed and passed with evidence | 100% executed; 0 critical and 0 high open unless formally accepted |
| Process | Regression of interfaces to carrier and bank | All passed in the final mock cutover |
| Data | Customer master, open receivables and open sales orders reconciled | Signed data acceptance; differences explained or accepted |
| People | End users trained and roles assigned | 95% of O2C users trained; 100% of roles assigned and tested |
| Technology | Output and printing for deliveries and invoices in production | Tested in production during cutover with sample documents |
| Support | Hypercare roster and key-user floor support | Named people for every shift of the first two weeks |
Contoso order-to-cash go/no-go criteria. Thresholds are examples; agree your own.
A threshold does not have to be 100% to be useful. Training 95% of users can be fine if the remaining 5% are named, scheduled and supported by key users in their first week. What matters is that the number was chosen deliberately, with its consequences understood, and that the plan for the gap is written down. Dimensions also interact: a weaker people score can be offset by stronger support, for example extra floor support in the Chicago warehouse, but that trade-off should be an explicit decision, not an accident.
Who decides what
A clear split of roles avoids a meeting where everyone defers to everyone else. The process owner recommends go or no-go for their process, based on the criteria. The cutover manager (Luis, at Contoso) reports execution status and technical readiness. The PMO lead (Grace) consolidates the picture across processes. The steering committee or executive sponsor makes the final decision. A process owner's "no-go" for a critical process should be very hard for the steering committee to overrule without documented risk acceptance.
What would you do?
Two days before the go/no-go meeting, Grace suggests replacing Contoso's data criterion "open receivables reconciled with differences explained" with "data migrated successfully," because reconciliation is behind. What should Dan do?
- Readiness has five dimensions: process, data, people, technology and support.
- Go-live acceptance criteria are predefined, measurable and approved well before the meeting.
- Read each criterion against its threshold and its business impact.
- Process owners recommend for their process; the steering committee decides; roles are explicit.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which is NOT one of the five readiness dimensions?
2. In SAP Activate, when does the go-live decision fall?
3. What does "predefined" mean for go-live acceptance criteria?
4. Who makes the final go-live decision at Contoso?