Evaluation of agile methods for quality assurance and quality control in ERP implementation

Abstract

Most organizations are now adopting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions to standardize, formalized and automate their processes. The organization usually hire IT Consulting Firms (ITCF) for ERP implementation due to its complexity, large scale, and domain knowledge. ERP brings radical changes in the environment, daily processes, and interactions of the organization. To make these changes gradual and incremental, ITCF are moving towards agile methodology. Quality assurance and quality control play a pivotal role in the success of an ERP implementation, with the use of agile methods the implementation becomes more complex. In this paper, grounded theory is used to study the rapid parallel processes of testing, validation, and verification for different phases of ERP implementation through using agile methods. In our study, 23 industry professionals participated from six different organizations. Each participant had experience of various ERP implementations in diverse geographical locations in various domains with different roles. This paper discuss and analyze different agile methods, which can reduce challenges in quality control and assurance during ERP implementation. The results show that agile methods (daily scrum meeting, pair programming and frequent reviews) reduce complexity and increase the quality of ERP implementation.