After finishing all planning, scheduling, staffing and budgeting activities, the implementation project for the confirmation module is green-lit. John can now release the project and the first phase to start the execution process. In the execution process the hired consultants and developers will record their working time for the project to the cost collector. The actual costs and working times can then be analyzed in SAP Portfolio Management using the portfolio items and in SAP Project Management by transferring the working times to the project.
The execution of projects in Project Management starts with the release of the project definition. The release of the project definition is inherited by the first phase and its subordinate objects, such as tasks, subtasks, checklists, and checklist items. Subsequent phases are released gradually (and manually) in the course of the project when the previous phases are completed. However, you can also release tasks, checklists, or individual checklist items of subsequent phases even if the phase has not been released.
The release of tasks and checklist items is a prerequisite for the creation of confirmation data for these objects. You can enter the actual start date, actual end date, work carried out, percentage of work completed, and (if necessary), you can manually enter the remaining work for this task. If you use the time sheet for the confirmation, you can enter actual dates and actual work for tasks in Project Management. In addition, you can post actual costs to the respective controlling objects in Finance. When confirming checklist items, you can enter the checklist item result OK, Not OK, or Not relevant. If the processing of tasks and checklist items finishes, you can document this by setting the status to Completed.
The completion of a phase in Project Management can be linked to an approval procedure that ensures all planned targets of the phase have been reached. The approval procedure of a phase is triggered by the user responsible for the phase after completing all approval-relevant tasks and checklist items. The user responsible for a phase determines which individual decision-maker approves the phase, creates an approval document with all information relevant for the approval, and starts the approval. Based on the approval document, the individual decision maker can approve or reject a phase accordingly. The total approval of a phase and the completion of a phase is performed by the person responsible for that phase.
During a project, you can regularly create project status reports, which contain basic information about the current status of the project. For informational purposes, these project status reports can be sent to the relevant users responsible for the project. In the course of the project, if exceptions (threshold value violations) occur in structure elements of the Project Management project or in the linked objects in back-end systems, you can flag the structure elements in Project Management. Using alert management, the relevant users can be automatically informed by e-mail about these exceptions.
