Short Story
It plays a critical role in ALM as a poor Project Management may lead IT projects to failure, thus throwing hundreds of thousands or even millions of US dollars in the trash.
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 is the right tool for Project Managers handling implementations of SAP solutions, because it is integrated with SAP Portfolio and Project Management (PPM) 6.1. IT departments can benefit from embedded integration with other ALM processes.
Long Story
The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines Project Management as “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project
activities to meet the project requirements.” It plays a critical role in ALM as a poor Project Management may lead IT projects to failure, thus throwing hundreds of thousands or even millions of US dollars in the trash.
The Project Manager is the person in charge to orchestrate the delivery of planned scope with high quality standards based on defined success criteria within available time, budget and resources.
There are several tools available in the market, and the most known is Microsoft Project. Although its powerful capabilities, unfortunately it cannot provide real-time progress and execution information as the statuses of tasks and activities must be previously collected and manually maintained in the tool. Another challenge companies experience is the lack of transparency of unplanned changes in the project scope due to the usage of different tools for project Planning and Execution.
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 is the right tool for Project Managers handling implementations of SAP solutions, because it is integrated with SAP Portfolio and Project Management (PPM) 6.1. IT departments can benefit from embedded integration with other ALM processes.
SAP Activate is a new methodology that encompasses 3 key pillars: the methodology itself, best practices and guided configuration. SAP Solution Manager 7.2 can import Work Break-down Structures (WBS) based on an XML schema supplied by SAP in few minutes to support e.g. SAP S/4HANA implementations either On-Premise, On-Cloud or Hybrid environments. All relevant phases and tasks from chosen SAP Activate methodology are described in detail, and accelerators are provided to jump-start project initiation, planning, execution and completion.
Project Management provides 3 views: detailed, or in the form of a table or a graphic. Of course, the latter is the Gantt Chart which was invented by Henry Gantt in the 1910s.
PPM also offers a role-based Resource Management function. The entire lifecycle is supported, from role definition, assignment of tasks to roles, staffing of resources, and finally to assignment of assigned resources to specific tasks. The example below lists two roles, Project Manager and Developer, and provides additional information such as the remaining demand or assigned effort.
As other SAP Solution Manager capabilities, Project Management is integrated with other ALM processes such as Requirements Management, Solution Documentation and Change Request Management.
The figure below shows the solution “ACME Corporation” is assigned to the current PPM project. Hence, Solution Documentation entities can enrich project information.
If Change Request Management (ChaRM) is enabled, a change transaction (e.g. Request for Change, aka RfC) can automatically be created out of a PPM task. This integration adds more value to the businesses because it provides more transparency and visibility of changes in the project scope, thus Project Managers can make decisions in time, and minimize the impacts.
Furthermore, it is technically possible to jump to assigned transaction type on ChaRM from a PPM project in a single mouse-click:
Last but not least, IT Project Management offers a function to Import / Export projects into Solution Manager 7.2 / to an external application. Two options are available: XML files and MS-Project.
Keep in mind this function must be used only for initial loads as upload of deltas is not supported.
