Hi all, this blog aims to throw some light on the some of the topics at an advanced level for those who are new to SAP PPM module and eager to know what it is. In no way, this piece of information could be used as a master reference for your organisation’s SAP PPM implementation. An experienced consultant should be guiding your application in all aspects according to your organisation’s Business processes and specific requirements.To know what SAP Portfolio Management means, click here to see my earlier blog.What is Bucket?Overall Portfolio structure is made up of Buckets. You can compare a Bucket with Positions ID in SAP Investment Management and Portfolio with an Investment Program.You can map a Bucket to a Department of an Organisation or product or division of a Project. You can also start with various Business locations of an Organisation with their product down the line in the lower bucket hierarchy. The Business reporting requirement of an Organisation will drive the Portfolio structure. But it need not be the case if an Organisation decides to use alternate hierarchy (or classification hierarchy).Organisations can run their Capital Investment programmes,   Operating expenditure projects and commercial projects which generate revenue. Companies can have different Portfolios for the above mentioned entirely differing functions or within a single Portfolio with distinct hierarchical Buckets arrangement.Portfolio Management Dashboard will allow users to see the Buckets as;

1. List of all Buckets in a Portfolio

2. Buckets arranged in a hierarchical structure

3. Buckets in a hierarchical graphic

Bucket Details

The Bucket specifics will comprise of Overview, Items, Initiatives, Collections, Reviews, Document and Notes and Miscellaneous.As an Administrator I will be creating Bucket as part of Portfolio Structure, create sub-buckets, assign authorization in the Miscellaneous tab (Active Control List) and maintain the Bucket status. The administrator will access the Buckets through Portfolio & Administration tab.As a user, I will go into Bucket details and perform the following tasks;

1. Check Reporting Cockpit
2. Check and perform Financial and Capacity Planning at Bucket level.
3. Create Initiative
4. Create Item
5. Create Review
6. Create Collection
7. Attach documents
8. Check/Perform Authorisation changes for the Bucket. The authorisation for the bucket is inherited from the Bucket to which it is attached. You can overwrite these values.
9. Check Sub-buckets.

OVERVIEWOverview --> General Information --> General details of the Bucket

The Bucket details screen Overview screenshot above shows the Bucket ID, Name, Description, Status, No of Items and Reviews. The screenshot above is the Initial screen of the Portfolio Bucket detail. From here you can navigate to all the other detail screens.

Overview --> Financial and Capacity Information --> Financial details of the Bucket

You will be using the Financial and Capacity Planning (1) more frequently.  We will deep dive into Financial and Capacity Planning Dashboard later in the Planning topics exclusively.Users can set the currency option (2) to see the financial planning and actual values in different currencyYou may use the period selections (3), i.e., Financial period and Capacity period to display the key figures in various time intervals in the financial and capacity planning Dashboards.The Financial Planning from and to dates allows the users to perform financial planning or show the values in the selected interval.The Demand Plan from and to dates allows the users to perform capacity planning or exhibit the values in the selected date range.The ERP transfer occurs only for the current transfer period set in this field.

Overview --> Financial and Capacity Information --> Sub-buckets

The Sub-buckets Dashboard (embedded dashboard) is one of the ways how users can drill down into the sub-buckets for details. The sub-buckets dashboard will only list the sub-buckets within the bucket that we have selected. You can view vital information about the sub-buckets.

You have to look for the Initiatives and Portfolio Items only in the lowest bucket in the hierarchy. The final buckets will not have any sub-buckets.Overview --> Financial and Capacity Information --> Capacity AssignmentThis Capacity Assignment tab provides facility to assign capacity at the bucket level. The prerequisites and procedure for this process will be dealt in detail while discussing resource assignment in projects and capacity evaluation at the bucket levels.Now we are discussing all about Buckets. We have completed all the sections under "Overview" inside a Bucket. Now we are moving on to the Items, Initiatives, Collections, Reviews, Documents and Notes under a Bucket.ItemsThe Items or Portfolio Items are the strategic projects that are created under a Bucket. As we have seen earlier Portfolio Items can be created only at the lowest bucket in the hierarchy.Items -->All Items (Displays all the Items irrespective of its status)Items -->Active Items (Displays all the Items with an open status)Items-->Active proposals (Displays the Items that are checked as Proposals)Items-->Active Escalations (Displays the Items that are checked as Escalation)Items-->Inactive Items (Displays the Items that are with “complete” status)InitiativesThe Initiatives or Portfolio Initiatives are the concepts,  Ideas or program that are created under a Bucket. As we have seen earlier for Portfolio Items, Portfolio Initiatives also can be created only at the lowest bucket in the hierarchy. You can create several Portfolio Items under an Initiative.Initiatives -->All Initiatives (Displays all the Initiatives irrespective of its status)Initiatives -->Active Initiatives (Displays all the Initiatives with an open status)Initiatives-->Active proposals (Displays the Initiatives marked as Proposals)Initiatives-->Active Escalations (Displays the Initiatives with checkbox tick as Escalation)Initiatives-->Inactive Initiatives (Displays the Initiatives that are with “complete” status)Initiatives--> Release Initiatives( Displays the Initiatives that are with “Released “ status) CollectionsYou will create collections to manage your Items collectively. You can create Collection under the lowest Bucket or at any other upper position in the hierarchy. It is recommended to create a collection at a higher level to able to assign the Items from various buckets at the lower level in the hierarchy. ReviewsYou can use Portfolio reviews for prioritization and project approval process. You can perform the simulation for a given set of portfolio items. You can assign Portfolio Items (or Initiatives) with questionnaires and or scoring models to get quantitative field values based on the qualitative input. Portfolio reviews can be used to prioritize projects in an Organisation using the scoring models. We will see Reviews in detail in the future Blogs. Documents and NotesThe Portfolio Bucket associated documents are attached to the Buckets here. Users can create new folders and New documents. Please note that you can also link documents from SAP Document Management System through URL (Document Info Record with the actual document URL).  MiscellaneousField Services configurationThe questionnaires and scoring models should be assigned to the lowermost bucket where the Initiatives and Items are created. This assignment is a prerequisite for answering the questionnaires at the Portfolio item or Initiative levels. We will discuss this topic in detail later. Please remember that we are going through the Bucket details and looking at the Bucket components. AuthorisationThe authorization lists that you maintain at the higher level is automatically inherited by the lower level Buckets. Users can go and modify the inherited values. Authorisation can be performed for individual users or Roles. Change documentsThe change documents for a Bucket captures the history of changes at the field level within a Bucket. However this is optional, and you can decide to activate or deactivate this function in configuration.Stay tuned for the next blog.If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below.