When to Bring in a Senior Architect in a S/4HANA Retail Program
Retail | FMCG | Luxury | DACH
Markus Krupp
SAP S/4HANA Retail Transformation
Typical Warning Signals
S/4 Retail programs rarely fail because of technology.
They struggle when architecture and governance lose clarity.
Typical early warning signals:
Endless template discussions without decisions
POS integration treated as a separate project
Fiori roles & apps growing without governance
Too many parallel streams without architectural ownership
Escalations between business, IT and system integrator
Rollout waves constantly re-planned
These symptoms often appear before major delays.
Critical Phases
Senior architectural guidance becomes critical in:
Template definition & design freeze
Integration build across legacy & POS landscapes
SIT / UAT instability
International rollout preparation
Executive steering committee alignment
At this stage, adding more developers does not solve the issue.
Clarity and structural alignment do.
My Role
In such situations, my contribution typically focuses on:
Clarifying architectural ownership
Aligning template scope & rollout logic
Structuring integration landscapes
Translating technical complexity for executive decisions
Stabilizing streams under time pressure
Objective:
Reduce complexity. Accelerate decisions. Protect delivery.
