Both tools SAP LeanIX and SAP Cloud ALM have the concept of projects (in SAP LeanIX initiative fact sheet with project fact sheet subtype) and milestones. This chapter explains a best-practice approach on how to set up your transformation program structure across SAP LeanIX and SAP Cloud ALM in the smartest and least time-consuming way, and what to do in which tool to achieve maximum benefit from the integration of the products.
To successfully orchestrate your business transformation, follow these steps to build, structure, and manage your transformation program across SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and SAP Cloud ALM:
Step 1. Build and structure your transformation program
Once initial transformation decisions have been made—for example, redesigning the Source-to-Pay process and replacing a legacy application with a cloud-first solution like SAP S/4HANA—the next step is to plan how and when these changes will be executed. This includes incorporating them into a structured transformation program.
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To plan and manage your transformation efforts effectively, create initiatives in SAP LeanIX:
- Start by creating a parent initiative fact sheet to represent the overarching program.
- Then create child initiative fact sheets to represent specific workstreams, phases, or sub-projects (e.g., process domains like Source-to-Pay or Lead-to-Cash).
Once your initiative structure is in place, enrich each fact sheet with key information:
- Timelines and key milestones.
- Relevant scope, e.g., affected processes and applications.
- Ownership and key stakeholders.
You can use milestones to link parent and child initiative fact sheets by connecting the milestones of child initiatives to those of their parent. This helps maintain consistent and aligned timelines across related initiatives.
Synchronization of initiatives and milestones with SAP Cloud ALM for automated planning and execution is explained further in step 2.3. If you are not using this integration, all data has to be maintained manually within SAP LeanIX.
Step 2. Create and manage transformation programs and projects in SAP Cloud ALM
While the concept of projects and/or initiatives exists in all three tools – SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, SAP Cloud ALM – the key recommendation is to use Cloud ALM as the main source of truth. The following steps provide some high-level guidance for the best-practice setup:
- Understand governance of transformation and who is doing what (personas, stakeholders)
- Set up and use SAP Cloud ALM to define the transformation project
- Define General information
- Define Roles (Role should be way leaner than in public SAP Cloud ALM)
- Define Scope
- Deliverables should be automatically inserted based on Project and Scope selection.
- Define General information
Step 3. Launch transformation for project management
The initiative fact sheet in SAP LeanIX is key for strategic and high-level planning of the transformation and offers a direct link to implementation teams if you leverage the integration with Cloud ALM for Managing Projects. Rather than creating timeline dates and milestones separately in SAP LeanIX and Cloud ALM, you can define them in one system and synchronize them in real time—ensuring a consistent, up-to-date view of project status across both platforms.
Leverage SAP LeanIX’ out-of-the box integration for managing projects to synchronize initiatives to projects in SAP Cloud ALM. The detailed planning of tasks, requirements and checklists can be done in SAP Cloud ALM, however the overarching parameters of timeline, dates and milestones can be continuously synchronized to SAP LeanIX, so EAs can monitor and get transparency on the implementation of planned projects and changes. Learn more in the documentation on Synchronizing Projects Between SAP Cloud ALM and SAP LeanIX.
Once the integration is set up, ensure your synchronization of high-level initiatives from SAP LeanIX is correctly in place with the right corresponding projects in SAP Cloud ALM:
- Screen in SAP LeanIX showing timeline and milestones.
- Screen in SAP Cloud ALM showing timeline and milestones (real-time sync and same data as in SAP LeanIX)
Now you can also initiate the detailed planning on task and checklist level in SAP Cloud ALM for implementation. Once the handover has happened and the project is secured to go into execution, you can quickly define key parameters in Cloud ALM’s project setup to accelerate the project launch.
You can import the different SAP Activate roadmaps and create relevant tasks and checklists in line with the quality gates. In addition, you can define an implementing partner.
Best practices for program and project management across tools
This section outlines best practices for managing initiatives and projects across the tools.
SAP Cloud ALM is the tool to steer the overall transformation project. Hence, it is the source of truth for the overall transformation project on hierarchy level 1, the project timeline and phases, key milestones, status tracking and execution.
While SAP Cloud ALM remains the master for level 1 project data, SAP LeanIX can be used as a master to structure the transformation further at levels 2 and 3 (as children):
- SAP LeanIX can serve as master for initiatives on level 2 and level 3
- Add level-2 projects for the different work streams in SAP LeanIX to give modelled transformations more structure.
- Add level 3 where applicable to model different scenarios or solution options. For example, use it to compare alternatives when an application could be replaced by one of two solutions, making the impacts visible and comparable. This level can also be used to incorporate automatically suggested SAP solutions for improving business capabilities. For more details, see Planning Transformations for SAP Solutions.
- Program/project milestones from level 1 get inherited to lower levels and shall be maintained in SAP Cloud ALM. If there are work stream transformation-related milestones, e.g., release date for changing a technology, those can be added in SAP LeanIX on the level 2 initiative to keep program-related milestones leaner. To learn more, see Milestones.
- Define the scope of elements you want to synchronize. Following above steps will lead to the following synchronization/ interaction between the tools.
- Level-1 project created in SAP Cloud ALM gets synchronized from SAP Cloud ALM towards SAP LeanIX.
- Transformation project-related milestones need to be maintained in SAP Cloud ALM and synchronized towards SAP LeanIX.
- Level-2 and level-3 initiatives created in SAP LeanIX are not intended to be synchronized with SAP Cloud ALM.
- Level-2 initiatives for work streams can be synched from SAP LeanIX to SAP Signavio to link processes to the initiative. Read more about Mapping Fact Sheets and Dictionary Items in the documentation.
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