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Abstract
Project- and task management software has become essential for teams and projects to improve organization, collaboration, and productivity. It is the foundation for transparency across all project activities. SAP Cloud ALM does an excellent job in this area and is not only able to keep up with the competition, but is in my opinion even more suitable for SAP projects. In this blog post, I want to look at the requirements for a good task management tool and then examine how SAP Cloud ALM fulfills them. If you want to get an overview of task management with SAP Cloud ALM first, I recommend the video [6] by @Jagmohan_Chawla.
Introduction
We all use tools like Todoist, Things, Apple Reminders or Microsoft To Do every day to organize our daily work. When it comes to managing projects with distributed teams, you need more powerful tools. These tools are often called task and project management or collaborative work management tools. Popular examples of this type of application are Monday, ClickUp, Alsana, Trello, Wrike, Jira, or Smartsheet [5]. Recent studies estimate that the market for task and project management software will grow from $7 billion today to $20 billion by 2030 [2].
There are some basic functions every tool should be capable of:
- Task creation assign them to team members
- Multiple view options like Gantt charts or Kanban boards
- The ability to prioritize tasks, set due dates, and categorize them
- Notifications and reminders
Some of the advanced features are particularly relevant to project managers:
- Break down complex tasks into smaller subtasks and set task dependencies
- Built-in time tracking capabilities and progress monitoring
- Quality gates
- Reporting and analytics
Let's take a look at what SAP Cloud ALM has to offer.
Task Management Features
SAP Cloud ALM has all the basics of comparable task and project management tools. A detailed description ensures that a task can be performed as the creator intended without further questions. The rich text editor in SAP Cloud ALM lets you create easy-to-read descriptions with different formatting, bulleted lists, character sets, and even tables.
You can assign more than 25 attributes to a task. In the Context area a task can be assigned to a scope, a solution scenario, a workstream, a deliverable or an application.
In the Status and Planning area, you can map the estimated effort using story points. A task can be assigned to a release and a timebox - a phase or sprint. You have the option to manually set start and end dates or link them to a milestone or timebox. If a milestone or phase end date is moved, the task end date is automatically adjusted.
In other tools, you can assign a task only to a person (responsible). In SAP Cloud ALM, you can additionally assign a task to a team, role, or user type. Team members can then proactively take on tasks, or a subproject manager can assign them at a later time.
Multiple View Options and Dependencies
In my blog post SAP Cloud ALM: Requirements Management on Steroids [1], I have already explained some of the functions that are the same for both tasks and requirements. This includes visualization as a list, Gannt chart or Kanban board or the creation of dependencies between tasks.
In addition, complex tasks can be broken down into smaller subtasks. Changes can be tracked using the history; task templates help save time and ensure consistent descriptions of recurring tasks.
Notifications
SAP Cloud ALM provides two ways to notify users: In-App Notifications and email.
The bell in the upper right corner of the screen indicates changes that are important to you - for example, if you have been assigned a task. From here, you can navigate directly from the notification to the task.
Another option is notification by email. For that, open the Preferences and select the objects for which you want to receive notifications.
Note that only the objects that have already been assigned to you are displayed in the settings. For example, if you have never been assigned a defect, the object type will not appear. Here is a sample email notification:
SAP Cloud ALM makes use of a technique known as deep linking. Deep linking refers to the practice of creating a direct link to a specific page or piece of content within a website or mobile app, rather than just linking to the homepage or a general section. The “Go to SAP Cloud ALM” button opens the associated task directly. This works with most URLs in SAP Cloud ALM, as long as the recipient has the necessary access permissions.
Comments
SAP Cloud ALM supports communication among team members through comments, project documents, and real-time analytics. In this snapshot, two comments have been added to a task.
Quality Gates
A quality gate is a predefined checkpoint or milestone in the project lifecycle that assesses whether the project meets specific quality criteria before moving on to the next phase or stage. It serves as a critical control mechanism to ensure that deliverables meet required standards and are aligned with stakeholder expectations.
SAP Cloud ALM makes it easy to create quality gates, define questions and answers and document the status. You can import quality gates from the SAP Activate roadmaps.
My recommendation is to create a quality gate for each phase. To learn more about quality gates, read the blog post Safeguarding Quality: The Necessity and Strategic Usage of Quality Gates in Projects [8] by @preethishetty.
SAP Activate and Roadmap Tasks
What does a successful SAP project implementation look like? What tasks should there be, what deliverables, what phases? SAP Activate is the solution, a comprehensive implementation methodology designed to guide organizations through the deployment of SAP solutions, particularly SAP S/4HANA and other cloud-based offerings. SAP Activate roadmaps [7] offer a comprehensive view of your project teams' associated activities, deliverables, and tasks with accompanying accelerator assets in document and hyperlink format.
With SAP Cloud ALM, it has never been easier to use the contents of an SAP Activate roadmap in your own projects. Simply select the appropriate roadmap (there are currently 26). The content will be copied to your project. The imported tasks are called Roadmap Tasks. The knowledge and experience from thousands of successful projects has been incorporated into the roadmaps to give your project a jump start.
With other tools, you are still thinking about what your project should look like, what attributes it should have, and what tasks need to be completed. With SAP Cloud ALM, you are already successfully completing the first phases of your project.
Relations
The power of SAP Cloud ALM lies in its ability to create links to other objects. Tasks can be linked to:
| 1:N | 1:1 |
| Other tasks | Requirement |
| User Stories | Scope |
| Process hierarchy nodes | Solution Process |
| External URLs | Solution Scenario |
| Workstream | |
| Deliverable | |
| Quality Gate | |
| Application |
This allows you to navigate to other objects quickly and easily. Above all, these links provide full traceability and allow the project manager to effectively control his or her project. The reports provided by SAP Cloud ALM make this particularly clear.
Analytics
The Project Overview is the perfect start page for SAP Cloud ALM. There are over 21 cards that each user can customize. It is also possible to view only the information that is relevant to me or my role. In the example, I have only shown the cards for the tasks.
In the Task Trend Analysis app, you can monitor the task trends based on statuses over a period of time by using the timebox filter.
Project Progress Reporting gives you a complete overview of all tasks in each phase, how many are planned, how many are completed, how many are overdue, and how many are left. If you switch from the table view to the chart view, you will be able to see the progress of the project in the form of a burn down chart. This allows you to see at a glance how much the current status of the project is deviating from the original plan.
These are just a few of the reports available. The task distribution report is also very helpful. You can find a complete overview in the SAP Cloud ALM Export Portal for Implementation [9].
Room for Improvement
Other task and project management tools have some features that are not (yet) available in SAP Cloud ALM. Did you know that there is a new release of SAP Cloud ALM every 14 days? Some gaps may be filled by the time you read this. In any case, it is worth taking a look at the product roadmap [10] to find out about planned features.
Here are some examples of possible improvements. Some tools are often more customizable, e.g. in terms of user-defined attributes for tasks. On the other hand, SAP Cloud ALM is already optimized for the implementation of SAP solutions. In some cases, tags are sufficient to replace customized attributes.
Other tools offer powerful automation features that help reduce manual tasks. Users can set up triggers and actions (for example, when the status of a task changes, notify team members). These automations can significantly increase productivity and will hopefully be available in SAP Cloud ALM in the future.
SAP Cloud ALM provides comprehensive API management capabilities that enable fast and direct integration with third-party and open source tools. However, understanding REST APIs and programming languages is required. Some project and task management tools offer integration with other popular solutions, such as Slack, Jira, MS Teams, or GitHub, that work out of the box and can be set up without any programming knowledge.
SAP Cloud ALM does not currently include resource and capacity management as some may know it from MS Project.
Conclusion
Collaborative work management is a game changer for today's projects. Task management in SAP Cloud ALM provides most of the functionality of comparable tools. The ability to load SAP Activate Roadmaps into a project makes SAP Cloud ALM the first choice for SAP implementation projects.
There are three other aspects that also speak in favor of the SAP Cloud ALM:
- You get a complete application lifecycle management tool with requirements management, process management and authoring, test and defect management, documentation management, and change and deployment management.
- You can use SAP Cloud ALM at no additional licensing cost. See [11] for details.
- SAP Cloud ALM for Operations [12] is also included, ensuring smooth business operations and improving the quality and performance of business process execution.
I hope I have been able to convince you to consider SAP Cloud ALM for your next project. Are you already using task management in SAP Cloud ALM? Let me know in the comments section and tell me about your experience with this.
References
[1] SAP Cloud ALM: Requirements Management on Steroids Blog post by Robin Schönwald
[2] Project Management Software Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Grand View Research
[3] Managing Roadmap Task Updates In SAP Cloud ALM for Implementation Blog post by @Nagar_Megha
[4] Cloud ALM for Team Task Management and Planning Blog post by @WernerJ
[5] Top 10 Task Management Apps for Teams by Fliplet
[6] Deep Dive in Task Management using SAP Cloud ALM YouTube video by @Jagmohan_Chawla
[7] SAP Activate Roadmap Viewer
[8] Safeguarding Quality: The Necessity and Strategic Usage of Quality Gates in Projects Blog post by @preethishetty
[9] SAP Cloud ALM for Implementation Expert Portal / Analytics SAP Support Portal
[10] SAP Cloud ALM Product Roadmap SAP Roadmap Explorer
[11] Usage Rights
[12] SAP Cloud ALM for Operations Expert Portal
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