SAP Solution Manager - Project Support

Our team has been working with clients on implementing what SAP calls Implementation Support, Implementation Content or Implementation Tools for a long time now. Since Solution Manager’s 15th Service Pack Stack the Solution Documentation tools were also added into the mix. The general consensus is that most clients are only partly aware of what Solution Manager offers in terms of project support and what the Solution Documentation tools are meant for.

A lot of clients had a lot of misconceptions about what Solution Manager’s Project Support application is intended for and what added value it brings. The Solution Documentation tools contributed to the confusion, as they largely depend on the Project Support tools to function and the two get mixed up.

Project Support - Four Features

1. Project Administration

The application to administer the general aspects of an SAP project, such as the delivery team, the system landscape, project standards and templates that are used in the other 3 applications, very basic planned versus actual data and the context of the project in terms of, for example, whether FiCo or SD are going to be implemented. (Integration with another Solution Manager application, Change Request Management, is also controlled from here. This is a whole other ballgame and isn’t part of this series though.)

2. Project Roadmaps

A project management application to structure implementation, upgrade and change projects according to, for example, the ASAP methodology.

3. Business Blueprint

The application, in which you design the business processes that are going to be implemented, upgraded or changed. Here you create the ‘to-be’ situation, mapping the business processes directly onto the systems they will need in order to run and the configuration that needs to be done in order for the business processes to function.

4. Configuration

The application through which you configure the business processes on the SAP systems according to the design that was created in the Business Blueprint transaction and where you document the configuration.

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The ‘linking pin’ between these 4 applications is application number 1, Project Administration. You create a project here, it receives a name or number of your choice and that becomes the unique identifier for your project in all four applications.