Week 3 of 8
Processes, risk and scope
An ERP test plan built screen by screen never finishes. One built on end-to-end processes does: order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, record-to-report, plan-to-produce, and the variants your business actually runs (returns, intercompany, drop ship, project billing).
Ranking those processes by risk is what lets a small team keep up with a vendor calendar. It also connects the test plan to the business case, which is where most programs fall short.
This week: list your end-to-end processes and rank them
- List end-to-end processes and their variants, not screens or transactions.
- Score each one on business impact if it fails, how often it changes, how often it runs, and whether it touches an interface, a customization or a financial control.
- Trace every requirement and every customization to at least one process test. Anything without a test is untested by definition.
- Take the top 20. They become the critical list for every exit criterion and every release from now on.
Number of the week
More than 70%
of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their original business case goals by 2027, Gartner predicted in 2024.
Source: Gartner prediction, via TechTarget (June 2026)Use this week
- Testing Risk Register →
Score product and project risks and let the score set test depth.
- Requirements Traceability Matrix →
Links every requirement to scripts, SIT and UAT results and defects, with coverage status.
Next week: the parts of your ERP that break on upgrade are the parts that make it yours. We inventory them.
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