Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The SAP Security Team Lead's Role Redesign Playbook

Lead a clean S/4HANA role redesign that survives the next SoD audit and the next wave of customer go-lives.

The role design standard your customer never wrote, written down once and reusable across every S/4HANA project you lead.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Most SAP security team leads inherit role estates rather than design them. A previous integrator built single roles that should have been composites, a different team derived plant roles without a parent, SU24 was maintained inconsistently, and the GRC ruleset was customised by someone who left. The result is an SoD report nobody trusts, a backlog of authorization tickets nobody can close cleanly, and a customer steering committee asking why every quarter looks the same. The fix is not another remediation sprint. It is a written role design standard that the team lead owns and every new role respects, plus a SoD remediation pack the external auditor accepts on first review.

What you walk away with

Write a single role design standard the whole security team uses across every project.
Convert an inherited messy role estate into a clean parent-child composite structure without breaking production.
Maintain SU24 such that authorization traces stop being the default debugging method.
Align the GRC Access Control ruleset to the role estate so the SoD report stops generating false positives.
Hand the external auditor an SoD remediation pack they accept on first review.
Train two to six security consultants to apply the standard without escalation.

The 12 modules

Module 1. The role design standard document

Write the single document every role on the estate must respect. Covers naming convention for single roles, composite roles, derived roles, and reference roles; ownership of each section; review cadence; and how the standard is enforced when a new consultant joins. Includes a worked example for a mid-size manufacturing S/4HANA estate that you can adapt to your current customer in a working session.

Module 2. Single, composite, derived, reference: when each one is correct

Decide structurally when a business activity belongs in a single role, when composites are appropriate, when derivation by plant or company code earns its complexity, and when reference roles are the right pattern. Walks through the failure modes of each choice and the maintenance cost downstream. Includes a decision tree the team lead uses in design reviews so the choice stops being personal preference.

Module 3. Naming convention that survives three years of change

A naming convention that encodes function, scope, derivation, and version without becoming unreadable. Covers the trade-off between human-readable role names and the SAP 30-character limit, how to handle plant-specific derivations cleanly, and how the convention interacts with transport requests across DEV, QAS, and PRD. Includes a worked convention you can adopt or fork for the customer.

Module 4. SU24 maintenance as a discipline, not a debugging step

Stop treating SU24 as the place you go when an authorization trace fails. Establish a maintenance discipline where SU24 is updated as transactions enter scope, not after errors appear in production. Covers how to handle customer Z-transactions, how to align with SAP-delivered defaults after every support pack, and how to delegate SU24 review to the team without losing control of the standard.

Module 5. Profile generator workflow the team can repeat

A repeatable profile generator workflow that produces roles consistent with the standard whether the consultant has six months or six years of experience. Covers the order of operations from menu construction through authorization data to user assignment, the checkpoints where the team lead reviews, and the common shortcuts junior consultants take that create downstream problems. Includes a checklist printed for desk use.

Module 6. Derivation rules for plant and company code without exploding role count

Derivation done well keeps role count manageable across a multi-plant or multi-company-code estate. Done badly, it multiplies role count by every organisational unit. Covers when to derive on plant, when on company code, when on cost centre, and when not to derive at all. Includes the rules of thumb that prevent role count from doubling at the next acquisition or carve-out.

Module 7. Critical authorizations, S_TABU_DIS, and the customer's risk appetite

Critical authorizations are the conversation security has with risk. Covers S_TABU_DIS, S_DEVELOP, debug authorizations, table maintenance, and the standard pattern for restricting them in production while leaving sandbox and development workable. Includes the framing the team lead uses with the customer's risk function so the answers stop being defensive.

Module 8. GRC Access Control ruleset alignment

The SoD ruleset must reflect the actual role estate, not a generic SAP-delivered ruleset that flags everything. Covers how to fork the standard ruleset, how to maintain customer-specific risks, how to handle Z-transactions in the ruleset, and how to keep the ruleset in sync with role changes so the SoD report stops generating false positives the team has to triage manually.

Module 9. Mitigating controls that the auditor accepts

A mitigating control is only useful if the auditor accepts it. Covers the documentation standard for mitigating controls, the monitoring evidence the control owner produces, the review cycle the customer's internal audit runs, and the language the team lead uses when the external auditor questions whether the control is operating effectively. Includes a worked control library the team lead can adapt.

Module 10. Emergency access via Firefighter without losing the audit trail

Firefighter, GRC Emergency Access Management, or equivalent. Covers when emergency access is justified, the request-and-review workflow the customer's audit function accepts, the log review cadence, and the patterns that make Firefighter a controlled exception rather than a routine workaround for missing authorizations. Includes the language the team lead uses with operations leads who want it open by default.

Module 11. The SoD remediation pack the external auditor accepts on first review

The deliverable that closes the audit cycle. Covers the structure of the remediation pack, the level of detail the external auditor expects on each flagged conflict, how to document residual risk, and how to present the pack to the audit committee so the conversation moves from defence to confidence. Includes a worked pack from a recent S/4HANA engagement that you can fork for the customer.

Module 12. Training the team to apply the standard without escalation

The standard only works if the team can apply it without escalating every edge case to the team lead. Covers the onboarding pack for a new security consultant, the design review cadence, the office-hours pattern that handles edge cases efficiently, and the leading indicators the team lead watches to know whether the standard is holding. Includes a worked training plan and a sample design review agenda.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

Inherited a messy role estate from a previous integrator and need to restructure without breaking production.

Running an S/4HANA go-live where the role design standard was never written down and the project is already in UAT.

Heading into an external audit cycle with an SoD report full of conflicts and no remediation pack the auditor would accept.

Leading a security team of two to six consultants who each apply a slightly different mental model to role design.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules covering the full role design standard, GRC ruleset alignment, and SoD remediation pack.
Downloadable templates: role design standard document, naming convention reference, SU24 maintenance checklist, mitigating control library, SoD remediation pack skeleton.
Worked examples drawn from S/4HANA engagements covering manufacturing, services, and public sector estates.
A per-buyer implementation playbook rebuilt for your current customer's industry and module footprint, delivered alongside course access.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Module 1: role design standard document.

Modules 2-3: structural choices and naming.

Modules 4-5: SU24 and profile generator discipline.

Modules 6-7: derivation and critical authorizations.

Modules 8-10: GRC ruleset, mitigating controls, emergency access.

Module 11: SoD remediation pack.

Module 12: team training and standard maintenance.

Before and after

Before

Every new role inherits a different mental model, SU24 is the debugging step, the SoD report is full of false positives, and the audit cycle ends with a remediation backlog the team carries into the next quarter.

After

A written role design standard the whole team applies, SU24 maintained as a discipline, a GRC ruleset that reflects the estate, and an SoD remediation pack the external auditor accepts on first review.

What happens if you do not address this

Without a written standard, every new project compounds the role estate's inconsistency, the SoD report stays mistrusted, the audit cycle keeps consuming the team's quarter, and the customer's confidence in the security function erodes one steering committee at a time.

Who it is for

Security team leads inside SAP customer-facing functions or system integrators, accountable for the role design standard on a live S/4HANA estate, the GRC Access Control ruleset that runs against it, and the SoD evidence pack that lands on the external auditor's desk. Typically two to six security consultants reporting into them, one or more customer steering committees, and an audit cycle that returns every six to twelve months.

Who this is NOT for. Not for SAP Basis administrators whose work stops at the OS and database layer. Not for ABAP developers building custom authorization objects. Not for first-line authorization support consultants closing tickets without owning the standard.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Six to ten hours of reading across the twelve modules, plus the time needed to adapt the templates to the current customer's S/4HANA estate. The implementation playbook is built for your customer so adaptation effort is lower than a generic SAP reference.

Why $199 is the right number

Generic SAP authorization training stops at the profile generator and never reaches the SoD remediation pack the auditor sees. Consultancy-delivered role redesigns assume the consultancy stays engaged. This course is built for the team lead who owns the standard after the consultancy leaves and has to defend it across audit cycles.

FAQ

Does this assume GRC Access Control or another SoD tool?

The course covers GRC Access Control as the reference implementation because it is what most S/4HANA estates run. The patterns translate to other SoD tools, and the per-buyer implementation playbook is rebuilt for whichever toolset your customer uses.

Does this cover S/4HANA on-premise, RISE, or GROW?

All three. The role design standard is the same; the deployment differences live in the implementation playbook the team lead receives alongside course access.

How is this different from the standard SAP security certification path?

The certification path tests knowledge of transactions and authorization objects. This course is about the standard the team lead writes and the SoD remediation pack the external auditor accepts. Different deliverable.

What if my customer's GRC ruleset was customised by someone who left?

Module 8 walks through forking the standard ruleset, documenting the customer-specific risks the previous consultant encoded, and bringing the ruleset back under team-lead control without losing the customisations that matter.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.