Steering Committee Meeting

A key component of any successful SAP implementation is to have clear and active participation from the project's executive sponsor.  As part of that involvement, a group of select individuals -- i.e., the steering committee -- is appointed to guide the implementation and to manage and resolve important issues that inevitably arise. The steering committee serves as the tiebreaker when issues can’t be resolved at lower levels and provides feedback, resources, and direction during the entire implementation process.

The focus of our first steering committee meeting is to provide an update on progress made during the first few weeks of the project. Overall, our progress has been good, but we've run into a resource glitch with the finance team assigned to the project. Resource issues are common to all extensive SAP implementation projects. After all, business doesn't (cannot) stop because of an SAP implementation, and it is unrealistic to assume that no resource-based issues will crop up during the entire span of the project..

In our case, the person assigned to lead our finance team is being tugged at internally to work on several important, time-sensitive, client-facing issues. With that, his involvement in the project falls short of what is needed and for that matter, what had been clearly mapped out during our planning phase.  

As a result, we’re running a bit behind schedule – about a week. In the meeting we discussed several options to resolve this issue such as bringing on another resource from another office, hiring an additional resource, etc. By the end of the meeting, our resourcing strategy was decided – hire another resource to compensate for the shortfall in that particular area of the project. Our resolution strategy also included a plan that would help us catch up to our initial established schedule.  

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