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SAP S/4HANA · Clean Core Briefing

Clean Core,
our way.

Clean Core is SAP's five guiding principles for continuous business transformation — agile, innovative, efficient systems, instead of heavy custom development. Our path turns those principles into three sequenced steps: Plan Clean. Get Clean. Stay Clean.

Mandalorian holding a mop with speech bubble: Clean Core - This is the way
01 · Principles vs Plan

What SAP defines. What we plan.

SAP defines Clean Core as five guiding principles for continuous business transformation. Our path narrows the work into three sequenced steps — prioritizing the Level-D findings that block upgrades — to prepare for the next release upgrade.

SAP CLEAN CORE
Five guiding principles
1

Business Processes

Keep competitiveness while reducing complexity.

2

Extensibility

Decouple extensions from the standard.

3

Data

Control data according to the latest standards.

4

Integration

Keep the landscape reliable and flexible.

5

Operations

Keep operations effective and efficient.

OUR PATH
Three steps, sequential
01

Plan Clean

Inventory the estate. Classify against A–D. Decide per object: keep, refactor, migrate, retire.

02

Get Clean

Remediate. Migrate. Validate. Make our system ready for S/4HANA 2025 — measured live in our dashboard.

03

Stay Clean

Every new requirement runs through one decision tree. Standard first. New build last — and only outside the core.

Predictable upgrades.
Stable systems.
AI-ready core.
— Our Clean Core position
STEP 01 Analyze · Decide

Plan Clean

PI 26-2 is the analysis phase. We use the RISE with SAP Methodology Dashboard to make the system upgrade stable: every finding named, classified against the A–D model and assigned a verdict — with Level-D findings holding the highest priority.

WE ARE HERE — PI 26-2
Inside Plan Clean — currently active in 01 Analyze and 02 Classify. 03 Decide and 04 Sequence are next, still within PI 26-2.
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01

Analyze

Pull all Clean Core findings from the RISE Methodology Dashboard. Group by system, by dimension, by A–D level.

02

Classify

Apply the A–D extensibility model to every finding. Level D — not recommended, not upgrade-stable — is the highest priority.

03

Decide

  • Per object: keep, refactor, adjust or retire
  • Business owners sign each decision
  • Nothing moves without sign-off
04

Sequence

  • Prioritized backlog
  • What we fix before the next release
  • What waits, what we retire
PROGRAM INCREMENTS · 2026

Next steps for PI Plannings.

Two Program Increments turn the plan into delivery. We're in PI 26-2 today. PI 26-3-4 starts the redesign of Level D.

PI 26-2
CURRENT · ACTIVE NOW

Analyze & plan

  • Prepare analysis of Clean Core findings using the RISE Methodology Dashboard.
  • Evaluate "AI Assistance for Innovation Adoption — Extensibility Intelligence."
  • Prepare detailed plan for Clean Core Level-D redesign.
CLEAN CORE TEAM MISSION

Ensure long-term stability and upgrade-readiness of SAP systems by replacing not-recommended extensions, based on SAP best practices.

STEP 02 Remediate · Validate

Get Clean — ready for the next release.

PI 26-3-4 is where we redesign every Level-D finding — replacing not-recommended extensions with SAP best practices and standard alternatives. The dashboard tells us how close we are, every week.

Live status of every system, every Level-D finding, every remediation in flight.

STEP 03 Sustain · Govern

Stay Clean — SAP's framework, our decision tree.

Once we're past the redesign, Clean Core becomes our operating posture. We adopt SAP's measurement framework — governance, KPIs, Q-gates, the RISE Dashboard — and run every new requirement through the decision tree below.

We adopt SAP's clean core measurement framework.

Governance & maturity assessed, KPIs tracked, actions defined — the loop SAP designed for staying clean, applied week after week.

D

RISE Methodology Dashboard

System View, Operations View, Customer Objects app. Continuous KPI tracking against the A–D model.

Q

Clean Core Q-gates

Quality gates baked into the RISE methodology. Every release passes through them — no bypass, no exceptions.

S

Standards Steering Board

The SSB owns governance & maturity: tools, structures, expertise required to get and stay clean.

A

ATC blocking mode

Priority 1 and 2 findings block transports in DEV. The technical floor under everything else.

No new Level-D code enters the system.

One decision tree, every time.

For every new requirement, the same four questions, in the same order. Standard first. Roadmap second. Enhancement third. New build last — and only when we've chosen the right place to build it.

Want more details?

The detailed brief covers every dimension, the A–D maturity model, the full toolchain and the risks. The dashboard shows where each system stands today.

Clean isn't perfect.
Clean is sustainable.