4.4 Typical Roles Needed for a BW Project
There are several roles needed for a typical BW project. It should be noted that these roles are not always held by separate individuals. Often several of these roles can be performed by the same person. This section is designed as a guide to help understand the skill sets involved in a typical BW project.
4.4.1 BW Project Manager
The BW project manager has the ultimate decision-making power on the BW project. He or she is responsible for every aspect in the BW implementation.
This includes development, testing, troubleshooting, implementing BW, and even the transition of the system to a production support environment. The project manager’s responsibilities include the following:
왘 Coordinate and centralize responsibility and accountability for the design, development, release, and maintenance of the BW system
왘 Work closely with business users, sponsors, and other stakeholders to identify and maximize opportunities for BW
왘 Ensure cost-effective BW design, development, and integration with other systems.
왘 Oversee maintenance and coordination of the integrated BW project plan
왘 Oversee the BW implementation, testing, and maintenance in support of business and information objectives and requirements.
왘 Provide BW technical and financial direction, by developing controls, budgets, and measurements to monitor progress
왘 Approve resources and staff BW project internally, and, if required, with external resources
왘 Provide overall responsibility for the quality and performance of the BW system
왘 Coordinate communication between all key IT groups, the user commu-nity, and BW team members.
왘 Facilitate adoption and change management of the BW system
왘 Develop cutover plans and activities and coordinate resources for go-live
왘 Develop and maintain a production support strategy
왘 Provide support and transition the BW system from development to pro-duction support
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왘 Coordinate and assign priorities for new development in the BW system with production support activities
The time commitment of the BW project manager is full time during all phases of the project. All decision making and responsibility for the implan-tation of BW ultimately falls to the BW project manager. Chapter 1 describes the qualities of a good BW project manager.
4.4.2 BW Business Subject Matter Expert
The business Subject Matter Expert (SME) acts as the conduit between the business organization and the BW development team. The main responsibil-ities of the SME are to understand the reporting requirements of the busi-ness and incorporate these requirements into the design for BW.
The SME provides a voice of the business in each of the decisions in BW.
Typically, there are multiple SMEs on any BW project, providing expertise in different functional areas of the system. The typical responsibilities for this role include the following:
왘 Understand the needs of the business and future direction of the business analysis needs
왘 Coordinate communication between the BW project and the end user community
왘 Aid in generating functional specifications for matching the business requirements to the design of BW
왘 Provide escalation of business issues and facilitate decision making
왘 Aid in the testing of BW to ensure that it matches requirements
왘 Work with the training and change-management team to communicate the new business processes as a result of the BW implementation
왘 Act as first contact for aid in resolution of issues
왘 Aid in transition to BW and away from the current processes
In a best-case scenario, the SME role is a full-time position on the BW team.
This makes sure that SMEs are always available to make the decisions needed to keep the project momentum going.
In many projects, it is quite difficult to secure qualified SMEs. To be useful, the SME must be very involved in the day-to-day business operation and must be able to understand and communicate the issues that arise in normal
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business operation. Such people are thus already very useful in their current positions.
To keep the SMEs focused on the BW project as their priority, I recommend that they leave their existing business role completely and become part of the BW implementation team full time. This allows them to focus on the project without the distraction and needs of the day-to-day business process.
4.4.3 BW Data Architect
The BW data architect is the most important person on the BW project, from the BW product standpoint. The BW data architect plays a critical role match-ing the business requirements to the BW implementation that will satisfy these requirements.
This person must be very experienced in the implementation of BW and works with the BW project manger to make implementation decisions on the design of BW. Because the data design and model must be strong in order for the project to succeed, this role is critical for current and future success of the project.
In larger projects, the BW data architect is either a single role or a role filled by a group of individuals. They map out the design of the BW project from a product standpoint to ensure that the data model and decision making reflect the best use of the BW system.
In smaller projects, this task is typically performed by the various application consultants who are implementing their specific areas of BW. Because con-sultants have differing levels of skills and experience, this can sometimes lead to conflict. A BW data architect helps to steer the project and sets an overall BW strategy. If application consultants who are focused on their own deliverables are asked to take on this role, often not enough thought is given to the overall strategy and future direction of BW.
I saw this at a company where I was implementing several years ago. The company did not have a data architect overseeing its BW design. One consul-tancy was implementing a finance InfoCube. These consultants had several reports that they were focused on delivering as part of their project. They worked diligently to make sure that these reports were delivered.
However, if those consultants had understood the overall direction of the company was toward more finance visibility and more detailed financial data, they would have adjusted the BW data model accordingly. Because they
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were unaware of the multi-generational plan for BW, they did not bring this level of detail into BW. Thus, once these new requirements were due, much of the finance work that was done had to be redesigned.
If the project had a data architect role from the start, this person could have helped steer the current requirements toward a future goal and accomplish both at the same time. The data architect’s responsibilities include the fol-lowing:
왘 Act as the main point of contact for all data model and system-design deci-sions
왘 Have a clear understanding of the BW product and functionality
왘 Be the primary contact for BW decision making and functionality decisions
왘 Ensure the development of corporate standards for data warehousing
왘 Assemble and coordinate the multi-generational data plan and steer the BW design to this plan
왘 Develop and provide a clear understanding of the BW data model and strategies for data modeling.
왘 Work to avoid rework, reload, and restatement of BW transactional data
왘 Help to incorporate performance standards into the design of BW
왘 Understand the end user requirements and the data that makes up these requirements.
왘 Recognize the integration points of the data in the various systems in the BW landscape and bring this data together in a logical fashion to deliver reporting needs
왘 Recommend a BW landscape strategy and coordinate transports across the landscape
왘 Aid in troubleshooting the BW system issues
왘 Possess excellent communication skills to understand and articulate the overall vision of BW to the project community
왘 Evaluate the timing and need for upgrades
왘 Coordinate and plan the system tasks for go-live
4.4.4 BW Applications Developer
The BW applications developer uses the implementation strategy and data modeling decisions of the data architect to implement the various business requirements in the BW system. This involves creating the various BW
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InfoObjects, ODS or DataStore Objects, InfoCubes, etc. The applications developer’s responsibilities are as follows:
왘 Use strong BW product skills to implement business requirements of BW
왘 Work with the user community to verify that the BW data model captures the BW requirements
왘 Take direction and work effectively in a team environment
왘 Use strong communication skills to communicate and understand scope and requirements
왘 Track, troubleshoot, and escalate product issues
왘 Offer knowledge transfer about the product and design
왘 Document design, both from a functional and a technical standpoint
왘 Determine the transformation of data needed and provide that transfor-mation in the BW system
왘 Code or coordinate coding of ABAP to complete design where necessary
왘 Work with the other consultants and team members to establish a batch load strategy
왘 Verify data quality and ensure BW is in sync with source systems
왘 Unit-test BW system, and work with the various parties involved to achieve a sound integration test
왘 Aid in transports and cutover to production environment
왘 Transition to production support team
4.4.5 BW Presentation Developer
The BW presentation developer is responsible for creating the presentation layer of the BW system. This includes, but is not limited to, BW queries, workbooks, dashboards, formatted reports, web queries, etc. This role ers all portions of BW that the user sees. In many projects, this role is cov-ered by the BW applications consultant. However, in larger projects this could be a separate role. The BW presentation developer’s responsibilities include the following:
왘 Understand the presentation needs of the project
왘 Plan the presentation of the BW data in the most effective way to fulfill user needs
왘 Communicate with the applications developers to understand the sources of data
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왘 Keep presentation of information in BW consistent using common tem-plates, query strategies, etc.
왘 Work with the business users and business SMEs to refine the presenta-tion of data
왘 Troubleshoot and track presentation issues
왘 Aid in transports and cutover to production environment
왘 Transition to production support team
4.4.6 BW Basis Developer
The Basis developer is responsible for all technical and system areas of BW.
This includes the setup of the system, administration of transports, patch application, etc. The BW applications consultants, presentation developers, and BW architects typically work very closely with the BW Basis developer.
Because the BW environment is usually a very dynamic environment, the BW Basis developer is usually kept quite busy monitoring the BW system and troubleshooting issues. Because the BW system has many tables being loaded and reloaded, there are many opportunities for Basis support.
Many BW projects make the mistake of trying to have one Basis resource to cover BW and the same resource to cover the R/3 or ECC systems. This is a mistake. The Basis BW role is unique and has different tasks and expectations that are not the same as the R/3 or ECC systems. The BW Basis resource spends much of the time working on connecting systems, troubleshooting loads and query performance, etc. This is a very different role than the R/3 or ECC Basis resource.
Because the teams work so often together, it is important that the teams meet regularly to go over the various open issues and prioritize the open tasks.
The Basis developer is responsible for the following:
왘 Plan and execute new installations, upgrades, and maintenance of the SAP BW system
왘 Perform initial testing of SAP maintenance applications and ongoing SAP BW log monitoring
왘 Aid SAP BW system performance monitoring and tuning in conjunction with the BW application teams
왘 Provide database-performance tuning and log monitoring and issue reso-lution
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왘 Perform connection creation and maintenance between systems setup and monitoring
왘 Plan and execute BW copies between systems
왘 Implement BW system backups and disaster recovery contingency plan-ning
왘 Perform transports between systems execution and aid in transport issue resolution
왘 Maintain and monitor security in the BW system
왘 Document basis procedures and policies
4.4.7 ABAP Developer
Most BW projects require some ABAP coding. ABAP is the source-code lan-guage of SAP and the source-code lanlan-guage of BW. When data needs to be transformed, ABAP coding is often needed to perform this transformation.
For example, a legacy system’s orders need to be loaded into the BW system.
These need to be combined with the orders that have been entered into the SAP ECC or R/3 system. To make the different company numbers and mate-rial numbers match, transformation is needed to change the source data into a common customer and material number. This transformation is done using ABAP.
Many BW applications consultants code their own ABAP transformations, and for this reason this role can be avoided or reduced on many projects.
However, if the applications consultants are not proficient in ABAP or there is very complex transformation of data, a separate ABAP developer may be needed, at least temporarily. This is typically not a full-time role in any BW project because the ABAP coding needed in most BW projects is usually quite limited. This ABAP developer’s responsibilities include the following:
왘 Understand the transformation needs of the project
왘 Understand ABAP coding strategies and possess development language skills
왘 Plan the ABAP transformation of the BW data in the most effective way to fulfill user needs
왘 Communicate with the applications developers to understand the sources of data
왘 Keep ABAP coding consistent, using ABAP development strategies
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왘 Troubleshoot and track coding issues
왘 Document technical design
4.4.8 SAP Portal Consultant
An SAP portal consultant is necessary in many BW projects, especially those that use Release NW 2004s and later. This is because the portal is a manda-tory part of the landscape. The role of the portal consultant can be limited or quite intensive, depending on the planned use of the SAP portal. Thus, the various responsibilities vary. However, it is important to include some portal consulting in any BW project.
The goal of the SAP portal is to allow all users one place to enter the various SAP systems and give a common look and feel to all applications. Thus, BW queries would be housed on the portal, and the portal would be used to present these to the end user.
In most BW projects, the BW developers are responsible for gathering up of the data from the source system and creating the presentation of that data, usually in the form of BW queries. After the queries are complete these are passed to the portal consultant for inclusion in the portal. Typically, the BW team is not responsible for the portal itself.
In many projects, the portal consultant is not part of the BW organization.
Because this role is used to create the launch pad for all applications, it is often part of a shared services group, reporting to the Basis organization.
How do we find all these individuals? Understanding the staffing models and needs helps in filling the roles.