Holistic IT management

Mapping support and IT processes is certainly the first step to further use and position SAP Solution Manager. Once the service desk and change management have been introduced, the topic of cost and activity allocation becomes more and more important.

This becomes important at the latest when IT managers have to give a detailed account or want to know for themselves in which sink the expenses are seeping away.

Now, of course, SolMan can also be used to measure and display effort in parallel with IT processes, but there are a few things to keep in mind here. My goal is always to avoid interpretation possibilities in reports and evaluations. This situation occurs at the latest when data is redundantly entered into different tools.

Looking at the change and request management of SolMan, a uniform view of projects as well as of services already rendered can only be achieved in a meaningful way with project and portfolio management.

The SAP PPM component was introduced relatively late with SolMan 7.1 and is now of course also available in an optimized variant in version 7.2.

The use of the PPM component is less a customizing issue and more an organizational issue. In general, all larger projects should not be mapped via individual changes, but as a release or a project.

Already here, of course, the first challenge arises: away from a consistent use of "urgent changes" to a control of changes in projects. These projects should - if one wants to use PPM - not be created directly.

The otherwise usual use of change requests is rather additional work for projects that have usually been approved by a committee anyway. It makes sense to create the projects in Project and Portfolio Management and also to maintain the project structure there.

It is not enough to create a work package that is then simply called "programming" or "implementation". Rather, all individual work packages must be specified and defined.

In this context, the expected effort can also be recorded at the same time. A work package can then lead to a change, but it does not necessarily have to. This is the case at the latest when work packages for the rollout, such as data migration, authorization assignments and the like, are also defined.

The interface between PPM and ChaRM is so good that a Change can be created directly from a work package. Usually, this is initiated by the project manager.

The creation of a change document from a work package in PPM creates a unique link between the two objects. This enables IT users to record effort on the Change.

These efforts are synchronized with the work package in PPM. If the recording of effort is carried out consistently, relevant analyses can be created for project managers from the PPM. A relevant prerequisite for this is, of course, that not only the times are recorded, but also that the work package manager continuously maintains the degree of completion.

Thus, on the one hand, the project can be controlled via key figures (efforts versus services, project progress, open work packages). In parallel, the times can also be transferred to the cross-application timesheet (CATS) of the ERP system for real activity allocation.

The central recording of activities and the structuring of work packages thus results in a clear recording of data, so that interpretations are ruled out. In summary, with the PPM for SolMan, SAP provides an extremely valuable tool that is just waiting to be put to work.

Of course, the organizational prerequisites must be created for the deployment. However, the use makes sense in any case. Time and again, I have customers who then begin to store customer-specific fields such as cost center and internal order on the Change.

Thus, although reporting requirements can be met to some extent, holistic control of projects cannot be achieved with it.