Designing the MDM team for an SAP MDM implementation project

Holy smokes, you guys are diving right into the middle of this, huh? I'm going to assume that, like most SAP customers, you'll be using SAP's MDM product. (This is not necessarily a good assumption but it's a safe one.) So your requirements and vendor selection processes are over. I'm also going to assume that there are data contradictions within SAP as well as outside of SAP, so you have multiple systems that will be consuming master data.

In such a situation, I'd want to round out my entire development team as opposed to focusing on the "front-end" as it seems you guys have done. This means you need to consider roles such as:

• MDM administrator: Someone to set up and configure the MDM environment. This probably isn't a full-time job, but it's critical nonetheless.
• MDM project manager: You'll need someone to create and maintain the roadmap of on-boarding systems and communicating progress.
• MDM developers: As good as SAP's MDM solution may be, it's not "off the shelf." You'll need to customize it using the appropriate development skills.

There are also "ancillary" job roles that might already exist. Alternatively, your new MDM effort might provide an ideal context for introducing them. Understand whether your company already has a data management group that's addressing data quality, metadata management, and general data requirements analysis. If you do, rope these people into your MDM effort and leverage their background with data. If not, it's time to go out and build your MDM empire!