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Introduction

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his guide provides a concise reference to the most important aspects of the SAP R/3 PS module. Project System (PS) equates to anything that is project-oriented and has a life cycle. Apart from providing detailed background information about the features of PS, this guide includes useful reference information such as Transaction Codes, Report lists, Tables, andFields—vital when you’re offline and need to refresh your memory. One of the hardest things to communicate to those trying to implement business requirements in PS is the various methods by which things can be done. Questions range from “How does PS work?” to “How can I distribute my planned costs over five years all in one go?” to “Why can’t I see my Planned Costs?” Reading this book should leadyou in the right direction. It has been developed with a top-down approach, starting with the big picture and “drilling down” to detail as you progress.

Project System: An Overview of PS
In business, just about everything can be viewed as a Project. The decision to use PS depends on the degree of complexity and functionality desired. SAP R/3 has other modules that offer objects capable ofemulating a project—Production Planning, Sales & Distribution, Controlling with Internal Orders, and Customer Services, to name a few. But none has the depth of structure, integration, and complexity available in PS. What exactly is PS? It is a repository for planning, collecting, and generating costs and revenue via a structure that truly represents what you are doing over a period of time. Howsimple is that? As simple or complex as you want it to be. If it has a start, a middle, and an end—it’s probably a project. Everything associated with a project revolves around what SAP terms Work Breakdown Structures (WBSs) and Networks. These are the objects that do all the work and carry information about what the project will do. They can trigger events, schedule work, and generate demands formaterials and services required to carry out the project. The SAP R/3 manual defines Projects variously: “[G]enerally complex, unique, having a high degree of risk, having precise goals, are limited in duration, are cost and capacity intensive, are subject to quality control and have strategic importance to the company carrying out the project.”

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SAP Project System Handbook

“Projectscan be structured according to how the project is organized and the process involved in carrying out the project.” “Projects are generally used as cost and revenue collectors.”

From Start to Finish
There are myriad examples where the preceding may not apply because of the nature of how a project can be structured. For example, a project could be created as a single element without anyassociated structure whatsoever; in this case, it’s simple because none of the “progressive” elements of project management apply. You might just want to record all the costs associated with the recruitment of a person into the company or with buying a mobile phone (there are, of course, other ways of doing this in R/3). On the other hand, you might build a highly complex structure that reflects everysingle task associated with the building of an offshore platform, including the various services, creation of assets, billing of customers, and so on. Needless to say, all possible functionality would have to be utilized, including cost/revenue planning, budgeting, resource/capacity planning, activity control, milestones, Gantt charting, manufacturing, capitalisation, earned value, and so forth. Asseen in Figure 1-1, an SAP R/3 Project might “progress” from Definition through to Settlement. You Define what you want to do from a business perspective, Develop a strategy that’s represented by a structure, Plan your costs and revenues, and schedule when events must occur, approve the Budget and distribute it throughout your structure, release the project and Execute day-to-day confirmations,...