SAP Activate
SAP Activate Prepare Phase: Activities, Deliverables, and Project Kickoff
A practical guide to the SAP Activate Prepare phase, covering project kickoff, governance, team mobilization, environments, planning, risks, and key deliverables.
The SAP Activate Prepare phase turns an approved implementation direction into an organized delivery effort. The project team establishes governance, confirms scope and responsibilities, prepares the working environment, and creates the delivery plan needed for the Explore phase.
Prepare is most effective when it produces decisions and working agreements rather than a large collection of unowned documents. Each deliverable should have an owner, an approval route, and a clear connection to the next project activity.
What the Prepare phase accomplishes
The Prepare phase creates the operating foundation for the project. It aligns the customer organization, implementation partner, and relevant third parties around the business case, scope boundaries, timeline, delivery approach, and decision-making model.
The phase normally connects the outputs of Discover with the detailed process validation performed in Explore. For background on how the phases fit together, see the SAP Activate overview.
By the end of Prepare, the project should be able to answer these questions:
- Who can make scope, design, budget, and priority decisions?
- Which business processes and organizational units are in scope?
- Which systems, integrations, data objects, and security responsibilities require coordination?
- How will progress, risks, issues, changes, and decisions be recorded?
- What must be ready before Fit-to-Standard workshops begin?
Core Prepare phase activities
Project kickoff
The kickoff establishes a shared understanding of the project purpose, expected outcomes, scope, timeline, delivery method, and immediate priorities. It should include the executive sponsor, project manager, workstream leads, business representatives, technical leads, and implementation partner leadership where applicable.
A useful kickoff agenda covers the business drivers, success measures, in-scope capabilities, major exclusions, milestones, governance, escalation paths, collaboration tools, and the first two to four weeks of work. Record decisions during the session instead of relying on informal follow-up.
Team mobilization
Confirm named people for project management, business process ownership, solution architecture, integration, data, security, testing, change management, and technical operations. Capture each person’s responsibilities, availability, authority, and backup coverage.
Workstream membership should reflect the actual scope. For example, a project with significant warehouse processes may need EWM representation, while a project with complex finance integration may need dedicated Integration and FI leads.
Governance design
Define the forums that will control delivery. A practical structure may include a steering committee for executive decisions, a core project team for cross-workstream coordination, workstream meetings for detailed execution, and a change control process for scope or timeline impacts.
For every forum, specify its purpose, participants, meeting frequency, decision rights, required inputs, and minutes owner. A governance model is useful only when decisions reach the people who must act on them.
Scope and dependency confirmation
Turn the high-level scope into an initial delivery baseline. Identify countries, companies, plants, sales organizations, warehouses, business units, interfaces, reports, forms, data domains, and security areas that need attention.
Maintain a dependency register for items such as third-party systems, identity services, data availability, network connectivity, external vendors, regulatory obligations, and business-calendar constraints. Assign an owner and target date to every dependency that can affect Explore.
Delivery planning
Create a milestone plan for Explore, Realize, Deploy, and the transition into Run. The plan should show workstream activities, dependencies, review points, decision dates, testing cycles, cutover preparation, training, and business readiness activities.
Use the relevant SAP Activate roadmap as a planning reference and tailor it to the project context. The SAP Activate Discover phase guide helps connect early business direction with the mobilization work performed in Prepare.
Prepare phase deliverables
The exact document set depends on the project, but the following deliverables provide a practical baseline:
- Project charter with objectives, scope boundaries, assumptions, constraints, and success measures
- Stakeholder and responsibility map
- Governance and decision-making model
- Integrated project plan with milestones and dependencies
- RAID log covering risks, assumptions, issues, and decisions
- Initial solution, integration, data, security, and environment plans
- Communication and collaboration plan
- Quality, testing, and defect-management approach
- Change-management and user-adoption plan
- Initial cutover and operational-readiness outline
- Workshop schedule and participant plan for Explore
A deliverable is ready when its owner, audience, approval status, and next use are clear. Store the current version in one controlled location and link related decisions from the relevant register.
Preparing for Fit-to-Standard workshops
Prepare the workshops before inviting business participants. Confirm the scope of each process area, the intended participants, the required decisions, the available system access, and the method for recording requirements and gaps.
The workshop schedule should allow the right business owners to attend without creating overlapping decision forums. Include time for preparation, demonstration, discussion, decision recording, and follow-up actions.
The SAP Activate Explore and Fit-to-Standard guide provides context for the work that follows Prepare. During Prepare, focus on readiness: participants know their roles, workshop goals are defined, and the project has a consistent way to classify outcomes.
Risks that commonly affect Prepare
Prepare can lose momentum when ownership is assumed rather than assigned. Common warning signs include unnamed process owners, unresolved executive decisions, incomplete scope boundaries, missing technical contacts, and workshop invitations sent before the agenda is agreed.
Other risks include an optimistic timeline, dependencies recorded without dates, unclear approval authority, limited business availability, and inconsistent use of project tools. Review the RAID log at least weekly and escalate risks according to their potential effect on scope, schedule, cost, quality, or readiness.
A short decision log is especially valuable. Record the decision, date, participants, owner, rationale, affected workstreams, and follow-up action. This prevents the project from reopening settled questions during Explore.
How to run a Prepare phase checkpoint
A checkpoint should evaluate readiness rather than document volume. Review whether the team, governance, scope, plan, environments, data contacts, integration contacts, and workshop schedule are usable for the next phase.
Use a simple status for each readiness area: ready, ready with action, or blocked. Every item marked ready with action should have an owner and due date. Every blocked item should have an escalation route and a decision date.
The SAP Activate roadmap viewer usage guide can help the project team navigate roadmap content and relate activities to the project plan. Keep the project plan as the operational source for dates and ownership.
Prepare phase handover to Explore
The handover to Explore should leave the next phase with usable information, not just completed templates. Transfer the approved scope baseline, stakeholder list, governance model, project plan, RAID log, decision log, workshop calendar, and open actions.
Confirm that business participants understand the expected workshop behavior: review standard processes, explain business requirements, identify genuine gaps, and make decisions within the agreed governance model. The SAP Activate and Agile guide is useful when the project combines phase-level governance with iterative delivery practices.
The project is ready to enter Explore when the people who must make process decisions are available, the workshop sequence is understood, project controls are active, and unresolved blockers have an explicit path to resolution.
Practical Prepare phase checklist
Use this checklist in the final days of Prepare:
- Confirm the project charter and scope baseline
- Name accountable owners for each workstream and major dependency
- Approve governance forums, decision rights, and escalation paths
- Establish the integrated plan and milestone calendar
- Activate the RAID, decision, action, and change registers
- Confirm collaboration, document management, and meeting tools
- Validate access and contacts for required systems and environments
- Schedule Fit-to-Standard workshops with the correct business participants
- Confirm data, integration, security, testing, and change-management readiness activities
- Review open blockers with the steering or escalation forum
- Hold the Explore readiness checkpoint
Key point
A successful Prepare phase gives the project a stable way to make decisions and move work forward. Its value comes from clear ownership, realistic sequencing, visible dependencies, and prepared participants—not from producing documents that no one uses.