IT Project Management with SAP Solution Manager – yes it is possible

Since its inception of SAP Solution Manager in 2001, it has taken various avatars, including a tool for BASIS and monitoring, to manage your implementation projects, an ITSM tool with its CRM components, an end to end testing tool and now using it for IT Project Management.

While, the implementation functions including roadmaps, business process hierarchy, documentation features were well versed in Solution Manager, the big gap was to use it for Project Management, Tasks, resourcing and scheduling. While there was a feature to download business blueprint into a MS Project file, I have not seen any customer use it. Business process hierarchy cannot be turned into project activities and tasks. And this feature was one-time, one way only feature.

With Solution Manager 7.1 SP10, SAP has incorporated the PPM – Portfolio and Project Management functions. This has opened up lot of doors for end to end IT Project management, adoption of development methodologies like AGILE, customization of Roadmaps to fit the customer’s Project Management methodology.

With this feature and functions, all the project team members, including the Project Manager, can work in ONE tool and ONE system. This is no more need of downloading into excel or MS Project, synchronizing data and spending hours before Project Status meetings. All can be garnered and presented from Solution Manager.

While this is great add-on for the customer, the key is to understand the functions and utilize it based on the size and phase of the project. For an on-going SAP maintenance and optimization projects, Solution Manager ChaRM can be used integrated with Project Management. The key features that can be utilized are:

• Link a PPM project to an Solution Manager Maintenance Project
• Create tasks and assign resources directly from the Change Request and Change Documents
• Tasks are assigned back to the PPM project
• Time recording can be done directly from the Change Request/Change documents which get consolidated into the PPM project.
• Resources and staffing assignments can be done to each task that will be reflected in the PPM project.

This provides visibility of scope, resources and time spent across the Change requests and by each change project. This also brings in the integrity between Change Management and Project Management. PMO will have a better control and access to resource and time information by project, change request and more.

PPM functions can also be integrated with Solution Manager Implementation functions. An implementation project is assigned to a PPM project that will in turn create the tasks, assign resources and allocate staffing for each task. This provides direct access to the Project Manager to all the task and resources across multiple projects. It makes the job of a Project Manager much easier, as all the information and workflow is included in one location.

With SAP Solution Manager 7.1 SP10, it is possible to integrate cProjects with Solution Manager, but this integration referred mainly to the status of cProjects phases which could be used to control Solution Manager Project phases.

o   cProjects, or Collaborative Projects, is part of SAP Project Portfolio Management.

o   This allows for the tasks and users to be automatically created.

o   It allows you to manage cProjects directly within Solution Manager and minimizes the time for, and amount of, configuration required for cProjects.

o   it is possible to manage resources, time and project phases through Solution Manager.

1. What are cProjects?

     i.      CProjects (Collaboration Projects) is the SAP web-based application for project planning, scheduling, resources management and costing across internal and external partners. CProjects is part of a suite of applications that integrate project management, knowledge management and resource management in collaborative inter-enterprise and intra-enterprise environments.

2. Who can benefit from the use of cProjects?

     i.      Organizations, their partners and suppliers from any industry and of any size with requirements to manage any kind of project can benefit from cProjects in a collaborative web based environment. cProjects is designed to support standard methodologies.

3. What are cProjects’ main capabilities?

     i.      CProjects provides a broad set of project planning and management, resource management, and task execution capabilities in a secure web-based collaborative environment. Predefined templates, project versioning, project reporting and analysis are all provided along with time reporting that can be integrated into your enterprise financial

Linking a PPM Project to Solution Manager Implementation Project

 

 

Create Project Phases/Tasks

Create and Assign Resources to the project