Working with Project Structures

Sarah, the portfolio manager, and John, the project manager, have discussed with Thomas the advantages and disadvantages of the project proposals. After checking the review they decide to adjust and enhance the existing CATS application in the SAP S/4HANA System as part of an implementation project. John starts the process by creating the project using a predefined template that contains the typical structure and tasks for an implementation project.

In the following lesson you will get to know the different phases in project planning and execution in SAP Portfolio and Project Management. In this lesson the main focus is on the understanding of the process flow and the project structure.

Projects can be extensive and complex. The success of a project depends on various factors, such as availability of resources, on-time delivery performance, or budget requirements.

SAP Project Management offers several state-of-the-art applications and tools that can be used to successfully manage your project, such as a HTML5-based GANTT chart or dashboards and applications that all can be accessed in a web browser with a modern and consistent look and feel.

SAP Project Management enables you to schedule project work packages and track execution through task confirmation and milestones with the following features:

• Modern HTML5-based GANTT chart combined with customizable information table to track project timeline and progress
• Integrated task management with responsibilities, status tracking, and task confirmation
• Plan resources based on task efforts, roles, and responsibilities
• Analyze resource availability, skill sets, and organizational assignments to staff your projects
• Synchronize project progress, dates, forecasts etc. with your portfolio for precise reporting
• Actual costs, efforts, and revenues directly sourced from Finance and Human Resources

The following aspects and processes require improvement in order to develop better products:

You can use the following project elements to support your method:

• Project definition

• Phase

• Checklist

• Checklist item

• Task

• Subtask

• Project role

Project roles are useful in project resource planning. Other project objects are used for structuring the project. The above figure shows the individual elements and their dependencies. These dependencies can be hierarchical or specified by relationships for scheduling.

Along with strategic planning and the entry of critical success factors at portfolio item level, SAP Portfolio and Project Management also provides resource planning functionality and a detailed breakdown of portfolio items.

If you want to plan resources for a portfolio item or if you require a subdivision of an item, you can link the portfolio item to a Project Management project. The associated project can be created automatically while saving the item.

For resource planning with Project Management, you require a project definition. With reference to the project definition, you can then define roles. Roles are formal descriptions of the resources required for a project.

As a next step, you can link tasks to the different roles. You do this to distribute the work among the roles. The distribution of resources and evaluation of the availability of these resources is usually performed in SAP Portfolio and Project Management across all projects.