Improved Team Member Work Analysis: Project Period Plans and Baseline Handling

With the August 2019 release of SAP Business ByDesign we integrated project period plans into the “Team Member Work Analysis” report in the Project Management work center. In addition, we improved the significance of the information being displayed from baselines.

The Scenario and the Questions Arising

As a project lead you have initially defined work packages and staffed them with project team members. Since the work packages extend over the full time frame of the task, in order to obtain a more detailed planning, you have created period plans for the individual work packages as well.

To reach an agreement with the relevant project stakeholders, you have created a baseline and introduced a change to the planning only there. Then, you have activated the baseline.

The project has started and some changes in the planning occurred that you maintained in the operational project.

Now, you would like to answer questions like the following ones:

1. What is the effort planned for the project team members including a drill-down into the period plan information that you maintained in the project?
2. How did the planned work change as compared to the active baseline including the period plan information?
3. What planning changes were there in the operational project as compared to the active baseline?
4. What planning happened in the baseline only?
5. What planning happened in the operational project only?

The “Team Member Work Analysis” Report

The analytical report now offers a new view “Team Member Work Analysis by Period”. The three new characteristics “period unassigned”, “start date period”, and “end date period” allow you to now report on a period plan basis:.

Now, let me describe what you see in the above report to describe how the period plans are being treated (1) and what the change in baseline handling is (2).

1. First focus your attention top rectangle “1” above.The points touched here are related to questions 1 – 4:
   • There is one line with “period unassigned” = “X” and a few lines with “period unassigned ” = “#”.
   • The lines with “#” represent period plan lines that are characterized by a start date and an end date. They may or may not have planned work: 1 h / 0 h / 12 h / <blank> / 2 h
   • The line with “X” contains the work that was planned on the task/service combination but not distributed to a concrete period plan line.
   • The first line (planned work 1 h, baseline planned work 10 h points to a change in the operational project as compared to the active baseline.
   • For the third and fourth line, you will recognize that both the period plan dates and the planned work are now different in the operational project and the active baseline.
   • The 5th line is obviously not part of the active baseline but the operational project only.
   • The overall planned work in the operational project and the active baseline are still in sync.
   • The sum – 15 hours  – represents the work planned for that employee / task  combination. This was the information already available earlier in the “Team Member Work Analysis By Task” view.
2. Now, let’s look at rectangles “2a” and “2b”. This touches on question 3 and the announced change in baseline handling:
   • In 2 a you see that — not on period plan level, but on task/service-level only – there was a change regarding task DCP24-1.
   • In the operational project 7 h are  planned for John Tompson, whereras, in the active baseline 7 h are planned for Peter Sellers.
   • Prior to ByDesign 1908, you would not have been able to recognize this behavior. There was only the line for John Tompson with 7 h.

The Data Source behind the “Team Member Work Analysis” Report

The data source “Projects, Baselines: Tasks and Staffing” (PROPRJU04) was enhanced to now also cover the period plan data for services. You are of course free, to e.g. copy the report to create an own one that better suits your individual information needs. Alternatively, you can as well create a new report based on this data source. The general recommendation is to only use the “key figure groups” provided to determine the key figures in the report. Key figure group PROPRJU04_STR_04 contains the period plan information.