A Framework to Analyse Most Critical Work Packages in ERP Implementation Projects

In order to achieve success in a software project, it is important to define and analyze the most critical processes within the project. A common approach to define most critical processes is the Process Quality Management (PQM) method. However, the process structure of the PQM method is too simple since it only provides one level of process analysis. Real cases imply project process structures that are more complex. We have improved the PQM analysis section to provide more depth to real project structures. This study attempts to analyze this issue in a specific type of software projects: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation projects. We present a framework to analyze most critical work packages in ERP implementation projects. We then apply the result of the analysis to SAP implementation projects. The result is a list of critical work packages in each phase of a SAP implementation project. These results show the higher importance of work packages related with organizational and project management aspects compared with the technical ones. Therefore, these results evidence the need of project managers to focus on these work packages.