How to choose between SAP Screen Personas 2.0 and 3.0. Start or Wait?
August 13, 2014 update
SAP Screen Personas 3.0 is now in ramp-up.
Original post
There has been a huge amount of interest in SAP Screen Personas, especially since the licensing changed in June 2014. While hundreds of customers felt the product was worth paying for, we have seen thousands of download since SAPPHIRE NOW. I suspect many of these people are now thinking about how to choose between whether to deploy SAP Screen Personas 2.0 now or wait until SAP Screen Personas 3.0 is available.
If you fall into this category, only you can make the decision about what is right for your organization. But, I will provide some guidance that I hope will help you choose whether to start now or wait.
Before making a technology decision, you need to:
- Understand the needs of the PEOPLE that will use simplified SAP screens
- Know their BUSINESS needs and what information is critical and what can be safely ignored
- Follow user-centric PROCESSES, such as design thinking, to identify and prioritize where to start
Preliminary conversations about SAP usability generally start with a discussion about business goals. Then, the focus shifts to the end user, aiming to address their specific needs for improved productivity and simplicity in their day-to-day roles. Some people follow the SAP Screen Personas getting started checklist to ensure that all the pieces are in place for a successful project.
Start with SAP Screen Personas 2.0 or wait for version 3.0? It depends on your go-live urgency.
Most likely, your decision will end up based on one key question: When do you want to roll out simplified screens to your employees?
If the answer is sooner rather than later, then immediately download Personas 2.0 and get to work. We have had several customers start and finish their projects with around six weeks. The finish line, of course, is having employees use simplified screens to complete their jobs. Freescale spoke at SAPPHIRE NOW about they rolled out streamlined HR transactions using SAP Screen Personas in less than six weeks.
The characteristics of customers that go live quickly with SAP Screen Personas are:
- Narrow and well-defined use case
- Dedicated and highly skilled staffing
- Compelling business need that creates sense of urgency to complete project quickly
- Continuous improvement mindset – willing to iterate until it’s right
If you are not in as much of a rush, then I still encourage you to start the process now. For many customers, it takes time to define the business scenario, conduct the user research, analyze the scenario, determine design themes, build design themes, create prototypes of screens, all before even touching the SAP Screen Personas software. By following a design thinking methodology, you obtain feedback early and often to ensure alignment with the business objectives, increasing the probability of success in your screen simplification project.
Once you understand and have analyzed all the issues, then you can start designing screens (starting with wire frames on a white board) and then building them in SAP Screen Personas. At that point, when you are ready to start building screens using SAP Screen Personas, then see what version of the software is available. This process will allow you to progress on your overall project, while deferring your decision on what version of SAP Screen Personas to use.
Or, you and your organization may make a strategic decision to wait for SAP Screen Personas 3.0. This option makes sense is you want to:
- Eliminate duplication of effort in training people on two very different versions of SAP Screen Personas
- Reduce the risk of migrating you flavors from SAP Screen Personas 2.0 to SAP Screen Personas 3.0
- Include advanced scripting in your flavors, which we plan to make easier in SAP Screen Personas 3.0
- Avoid Silverlight entirely in the context of SAP Screen Personas
We wish you success with your SAP Screen Personas project, whichever version you select.
For the SAP Screen Personas product team, Peter Spielvogel.
Hi Peter,
Few questions:
(1) is there any technical comparison between Personas 2.0 (silverlight) and 3.0 ? (In terms of functionalities or capabilities)
(2) will there be any tools provided for migration of flavors from Personas 2.0 (silverlight) to 3.0 ?
Regards,
Ferry Mulyadi
SAP don't usually disclose much detail about new products before they are released. That said, there's more information than usual about Personas v3, not least because it was demoed at ASUG/Sapphire last month. Peter gave some details here - How customer feedback shaped the future of SAP Screen Personas– SAPPHIRE NOW session summary - and I wrote up a summary here - SAP Screen Personas at SapphireNOW.
Both of those blog posts specifically address your migration question - the intention (intention, not promise) is that most v2 flavours should migrate automatically, with little or no manual intervention required.
I think it is also fair to say that the intention is that v3 should be largely as capable functionally as v2. The underlying technology is different, though, so don't be surprised if there are minor differences.
Steve.
Thanks Steve, this clarified my questions earlier.
Is there any release date for Personas 3.0 available?
Thanks
The only dates so far made public are in this blog: SAP Screen Personas HTML update. In summary, "planned for 2014".
Steve.
Just in case you haven't seen the announcement yet - Announcing SAP Screen Personas 3.0. Ramp-up has started...
Great news, scripting features in JS should help hopefully!
Hi Peter,
Exciting news. Is there a list of pre-requisites for Personas 3.0 available somewhere?
Thanks,
Glenn
Hi Glenn,
The technical requirements are listed here:
http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2014/08/13/how-to-apply-for-sap-screen-personas-30-ramp-up
Regards,
Peter
Hi Peter,
Does Personas 3.0 have system selection screen as 2.0? Do we need to install 3.0 on every system?
Thanks,
Chan
Hi Chan,
Due to the architectural changes in SAP Screen Personas 3.0, you need to install the add-on onto every system where you want to consume simplified screens.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Peter Spielvogel,
at this moment, which product option do you recommend us to take (personas 200 or personas 300) ? considering that we are planning the deployment in a SAP sandbox client system.
thanks in advance,
Rodolfo
Hi Rodolfo,
There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as each product has certain advantages.
At this point (March 2015, still during ramp-up), we recommend that most new customers start now on SAP Screen Personas 2.0 (very mature and stable product) and then migrate to SAP Screen Personas 3.0 when they feel ready. SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP3 (available end of March 2015) significantly improves performance, which was one of the reasons some customers wanted to wait for version 3.0.
When you are ready to migrate from SAP Screen Personas 2.0 to 3.0, the process is very simple and you will preserve the work you have done on simplifying your screens and business processes.
Good luck on your project!
Regards,
Peter
Thank you Peter Spielvogel , I really appreciate your comments, always very valuable and precise.
Regards,
Rodolfo
Hi Peter,
Is the Personas 3.0 still on schedule for end Q2 release?
We have immediate need for personas. Should we wait until end of June or proceed with Personas 2.0?
Thanks & Regards,
Helly
Hi Helly,
SAP Screen Personas 3.0 is currently in ramp-up, and we are still planning to release as GA at end of Q2. I would recommend you proceed with version 2.0 and go live. SAP Screen Personas 2.0 is a very stable and mature product. We have many customers running this in production around the world.
The approach is identical between the two versions. The hard work of understanding user requirements and streamlining business processes is the same. You do this independent of the tool. The screens are different, but easy to learn in both cases.
Once you are live on version 2.0, you can migrate to 3.0 at your convenience after the product is generally available and you have the necessary pre-requisites in place. We plan to release SAP Screen Personas 3.0 as GA at the end of June. Migrating your work from 2.0 to 3.0 is fast and easy, so your work will be preserved.
Recommendation: start now on SAP Screen Personas 2.0
Regards,
Peter
Thanks Peter.
We will start with Personas 2.0 then.
Best Regards,
Helly
Dear Peter,
I was attending your SAP Screen Personas 3.0 Open SAP Course and enjoyed it very much. To extend our knowlege of Personas 3.0 will activated the Free Personas 3.0 solution on the Cloud Application Library.
Unfortunately the solution expired today (in the middle of doing some flavor creating). In an other blog post i read that GA of Personas 3.0 will be by the end of june 2015. We would love to use the CAL solution of Personas 3.0 to learn more and to be ready for our customers when Personas 3.0 is general available.
Do you see any chance to prolongt the CAL solution ?
For us using Personas 2.0 and afterwards migrate to 3.0 is not an opportunity. We want to use the time till end of june to earn knowlege with 3.0 but don't have the chance to do so. Unfortunately we missed the ramp-up for 3.0.
Best Regards,
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
Unfortunately, we cannot extend the CAL image.
If you are a partner (sounds like this, as you are preparing to be ready for your customers), you can download SAP Screen Personas 3.0 through SAP Partner Edge. Please email me if you are not able to do this.
Otherwise, you will need to wait for general availability.
Regards,
Peter
Dear Peter,
yes we at Swisscom are both Partner and Customer. Could you please help me with the download ? My colleague could not found a download link at the SAP Partner Edge.
Thx for your Support.
Regards,
Thomas
Hi,
I am not sure if I understand correctly the difference between 2.0 and 3.0
I have personas 2.0 sp2 in my system. and now that 3.0 is released, i have installed the component. But both 2.0 and 3.0 seems to exist together in the same system.
It looks like everything under namespace /persos/ are from version 2 and /personas/ are from version 3.
Also, in version 2. I configured a multiple system landscape, i have a dedicated netweaver system just for personas and this connect to other erp system. User is able to select which systems they want to connect to when they logon to the personas netweaver system.
But in version 3, i dont seem to find this configuration. seems like there is no multi system setup for personas 3?
Hi,
Personas 2 and Personas 3 can coexist in the same system. They don't influence each other.
Because of being integrated deeper into the system, Personas 3 needs to be installed on each system, where you want to use it.
Regards
Björn
Thanks.
Then i think this reference guide is wrong.
http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/Img/Personas+3.0+Configuration+Guide+-+Addendum
And the author mixed up elements from version 2 and 3.
You are correct - that document is wrong. It looks like it has been copied from the Personas 2 documentation. I'm not sure any of it is relevant. I suggest ignoring it. I'll contact the relevant people and get it removed...
Steve.
Indeed, the linked article is wrong since it is a copy of the Personas 2.0-related information under the 3.0 title.
It will be corrected.