5 Common Mistakes in S/4HANA DVM Projects (And How to Avoid Them)
A Data Volume Management (DVM) project promises lower costs and better performance. Yet, many initiatives fail to deliver their full potential due to avoidable mistakes. Here are the five most common pitfalls we see and how you can ensure your project is a success.
MISTAKE #1: TREATING IT AS A PURELY TECHNICAL TASK
The Pitfall: The IT team identifies large tables and starts archiving without consulting the business. This leads to archived data that business users suddenly need, causing panic and a loss of faith in the project.
How to Avoid It: DVM is a business project enabled by IT. Involve business process owners from day one. Hold workshops to define data retention and retrieval requirements together. Their buy-in and sign-off are non-negotiable.
MISTAKE #2: IGNORING DATA QUALITY AND OPEN DOCUMENTS
The Pitfall: The project team plans to archive 10 years of data, but the archiving job only processes a fraction of that. The reason? The system is full of old, unclosed documents (e.g., open purchase orders, uncleared financial items) that cannot be archived by standard logic.
How to Avoid It: Plan for a "Data Cleanup" phase at the very beginning of your project. Run analyses to find and resolve old open items. This cleanup work is often the most time-consuming part of a DVM project and must be factored into the timeline.
MISTAKE #3: INSUFFICIENT TESTING
The Pitfall: The team runs the write and delete jobs in the test system and confirms the database size is reduced. They consider the test successful. After go-live, users discover they cannot access or view the archived data in the way they need to for their daily work or for an audit.
How to Avoid It: Testing isn't complete until you have fully validated the retrieval process. Business users must participate in testing to confirm they can access archived data and that it doesn't negatively impact their critical reports and processes.
MISTAKE #4: NO CHANGE MANAGEMENT OR COMMUNICATION
The Pitfall: The project goes live, but users are not informed about what has changed. They might see slightly different screen behavior or need to use a new transaction to find old data. They perceive the system as "broken" and flood the help desk with tickets.
How to Avoid It: Create a simple communication and training plan. Inform users about the upcoming changes, show them how to access archived data, and explain the benefits of the project (e.g., "This will make your month-end reports run faster").
MISTAKE #5: VIEWING DVM AS A ONE-TIME PROJECT
The Pitfall: The company completes a successful archiving project, reduces the database size by 40%, and declares victory. Two years later, the database has grown back to its original size because no ongoing process was established.
How to Avoid It: DVM is a continuous process, not a one-off event. The final step of your project should be to schedule regular, automated archiving jobs. Establish a yearly review of data growth to ensure the system remains lean.
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