This track talk introduces some research performed by the author into ERP (in particular SAP) project experiences. The purpose was to identify common patterns of failure in (typically) large scale, long-term projects. Sources included integration companies, project manager staff and user management. With a limited number of sources, over seventy actual project failure modes and risk mitigation actions experienced by interviewees were identified.
The purpose of this work was to provide a coherent set of ‘challenges’ to projects. Each failure mode is a potential risk of concern to your project and the question for each is, ‘has this risk been addressed?’ The intention would be to ensure all the foreseeable risks of concern are addressed. Lessons Learned ‘areas’ include Organisation, Preparation, User Issues, Change Management as well as Testing and QA.

No list of failure modes can ever be complete. The number of potential failure modes in projects and systems is limitless. This paper attempts to summarise the broad categories of failure so that the reader may adjust any of these experiences to their own situation. A failure mode presented here may not be relevant to your project directly, but with adjustment, the pattern of failure may be worth considering.

Key Points:

• Hear of real-world failures in ERP/SAP projects


• See how these failure modes can be classified to structure them into project challenges


• Learn how the challenges were used in a real project.