Yvonne ParleEast Victoria Park, Western Australia, Australia
Hi,
The company I'm working with are considering an implementation of SAP Project System (SAP PS). Does anyone have experience of delivering a programme of work using this system? I'd love to hear some real world experiences and opinions on the efficacy of the product.
Thanks in advance
Yvonne Saving Changes...
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Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
Hi Yvonne,
There are pros and cons associated with SAP PS. The pros are that it is fully integrated, the cons are well just about everything else. I used SAP PS as a planning tool a few years ago and unless there has been an astronomic improvement since 2007, then you'd better hope your company considers a 'proper' planning tool as a front end interface rather than using SAP PS directly.
Everything is derived from a master template WBS which has to be created in SAP PS before anyone can even start planning their projects. And because each project has to be generated from a pre-defined template, this means you, as a PM, cannot just create an individual WBS and Work Packages from scratch that is an exact fit to your project.
Why do you have to do this? Well the answer is a simple on, SAP PS is a bolt on module to a financial tool rather than being a dedicated planning tool. One of the so-called 'strengths' of SAP PS is that management will be able to see in an instant not only how much money they are spending, or have spent, on each WBS element of your project, but on every single project that the company has undertaken or is currently undertaking, slicing and dicing the data in any number of ways.
Now why does this seem to be a problem? On the surface it doesn't, management can create and access financial status reports very easily and because it happens in real time, the accountants will love it as all the financial information about the project is transparent and readily available. I.e. no more massaging the figures by the PM!! - Note the direction this post has taken and how I mention accountants, financial reports, cost accounting, before I refer to planning, monitoring and controlling a project.
In some companies that do the same type of project over and over again this may be appropriate as management may want to know how much money they spend on say configuration management or quality assurance each financial year, but as a PM your focus is delivering your project and your project only. There may be some dependencies or deliveries coming into your project from another project and that's about it, In my experience, and it may differ from company to company, project management and therefore project delivery is sacrificed as a result of the approach you have to take to implement this module.
Leaving aside the fact that it's extremely user unfriendly and it takes an absolute age to set up and maintain a schedule, you will eventually end up planning at such a high level the schedule ceases to be a primary weapon in the PMs arsenal. In effect your SAP PS schedule will only ever be populated with historic data used to report up the chain and a separate schedule in a 'proper' planning tool will be surreptitiously used to run the project.
Now is this of benefit to a PM? Well obviously the answer would be a resounding no. Would a programme or finance manager care that you cannot easily access and update your project, or that it takes three times as long to do a simple task like assign a resource. I would imagine the no would be equally resounding, as long as you deliver the goods of course.
You always have to be aware as a planning tool it has considerable limitations and if you attempt to manage a project solely using SAP PS then you’re on a hiding to nothing. It is an integrated enterprise resource planning solution with the cherry on the top being as it's integrated there’s no 'undo' function, once you it update that's it.
As you may have detected from my tone I wasn't its biggest fan. On top of the shortcomings SAP has also has its own PM terminology that may throw people from a traditional PM background, so if you can get hold of a glossary beforehand it will stand you in good stead.
Regards,
Darren
P.S. (no pun intended) Just hope that if it does get the go ahead your project isn't active when they decide to migrate your project data into SAP. Scrubbing the project data to ensure it's accurate and reflects the project status prior to migration will almost be another project in its own right. Saving Changes...
Yvonne ParleEast Victoria Park, Western Australia, Australia
Thanks Darren for that comprehensive response based on your experience of using the product. I note your points on potentially needing two tools, one for day to day and the other PS for consolidated reporting, it may be that we can only migrate at a Programme level in the first phase while the PMs assess the product and the effort of migration of existing projects. Thanks very much! Yvonne Saving Changes...
Manik SanadiHead-Global PMO| Quest Global Engineering ServicesPune, Maharastra, India
Hi Yvonne,
Even my company is planning to implement SAP PS. It would be great to hear your experience as you move on. As Darren said, me too is not a great fan of it, but since our company has been implementing it as a ERP tool, it's seen as good integrated solution.
Let's see, and share our experiences.
Manik Saving Changes...
Yvonne ParleEast Victoria Park, Western Australia, Australia
Thanks for your post Manik and yes let's share the lessons we learn as we implement this new change to our SAP systems. Saving Changes...
Manik SanadiHead-Global PMO| Quest Global Engineering ServicesPune, Maharastra, India
Hey Yvonne,
Have you started SAP-PS implementation ?
WE have started doing it. I am focusing more on using New Product Development framework inside it. Do share your experience with it. Saving Changes...
