Oracle® Fusion
Applications Project Management Implementation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.2) Part Number E20384-02 |
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This chapter contains the following:
Performance Data Summarization: How It Is Calculated
Setting Up the Planning Amount Allocation Basis: Points to Consider
FAQs for Manage Project Units: Performance Reporting Options
Summarization is a systematic organization of information for purposes of project analysis and tracking. You use summarized data to analyze the health of projects and drill down to the causes of any deviation from set thresholds. You can complete the following tasks using summarized data:
Analyzing project performance data
Reviewing project performance
Analyzing KPI categories and KPIs
Tracking project progress
Viewing revenue and invoice summaries
After you run summarization, the KPI related information is rendered out of date with respect to the latest summarized information. Therefore, it is important that you generate KPI values once the summarization process is completed. You can avoid generating KPI values manually, by enabling automatic generation of KPI values in the summarization options.
You summarize data for a project unit or a business unit. You can also summarize performance data for a range of projects or projects owned by a project manager. Besides this, you must specify the following parameters each time you want to run the summarization process manually:
Select the appropriate summarization method:
Incremental, for general purpose summarization.
Bulk, for summarizing large amounts of data all at once.
Delete and resummarize, for correcting summary data when the source system data is changed outside the regular transaction flow.
Resource breakdown structure, for migrating all summary data from one resource breakdown structure version to the next. If you select this option you must also specify the resource breakdown structure header.
Specify whether to summarize budget and forecast, commitment, actual cost, revenue and invoice, and client extension transactions.
Performance data summarization collects data from various sources and assigns amounts to relevant tasks and resources in the project. After data is summarized, you can view how much is being spent on, incurred by, or received by a task or resource. Also, data is grouped according to periods so that it can be tracked across different time lines.
You can run the summarization process for different situations, such as:
Your data is out of date and you want to update it.
Your data is corrupt and you want to delete the existing data and resummarize.
You have a large volume of data that is not yet summarized and want to summarize the entire bulk of data in one run.
After you select the parameters for summarization and submit a request, the application performs the following steps to generate the data that you view in the application:
Scope summarization by determining the list of projects, contracts, and batches of transaction data for which to run summarization.
Extract data to be summarized from data sources, group it by periods, and ensure the data is prepared for resource mapping.
Populate summary data into designated tables before resource breakdown structure mapping.
Populate business unit, project unit, and other lookup information.
Populate performance reporting dimension data including time, task breakdown structure, and resource breakdown structure.
Look up resource breakdown structure mappings, scenario dimension members, period IDs, and prepare data for Essbase load.
Load data into Essbase and merge data into summary tables.
You can track the progress of summarization on the process monitor. If the process fails to complete, it continues from the point of failure when you resubmit it.
When you set up summarization options, you are required to specify the planning amount allocation basis. You can select a planning amount allocation basis only if you have selected the budgets and forecast data source for summarization. The following are the methods of allocating planning amounts:
Period start date
Period end date
Daily proration
Note
You cannot change the planning amount allocation basis if summarized data exists.
Assume that a project includes a task for team members to undergo some product and soft skills training. A budget of $5900 is allocated to this task between 1 January 2011 and 28 February 2011. While summarizing using a monthly accounting calendar, the application can allocate the planned amount in three ways.
Allocate the entire budget of $5900 to the first period of January 2011 regardless of when the training takes place. This allocation method could impact period to date cost variance measures for January and February if the actual training costs occur in February. The period start date basis method is the default option.
Allocate the entire budget of $5900 to the last period of February 2011 regardless of when the training takes place. This allocation method could impact period to date cost variance measures for January and February if the actual training costs occur in January.
Distribute the budget of $5900 equally over the entire period so that $3100 is spent in January 2011 and $2800 is spent in February 2011. The following shows how the budget is distributed:
Allocate the total amount of $5900 and dividing it by the total number of days to arrive at the daily amount.
Total Number of Days = 31 + 28 = 59
Daily Amount = $5900 / 59 = $100
Multiply daily amount by the number of days the task is active.
Amount for January 2011 = $100 x 31 = $3100
Amount for February 2011 = $100 x 28 = $2800
Summarizing project performance data using daily proration requires more system resources than summarizing project performance data using the period start or end date basis. To distribute plan amounts evenly across plan duration, the application creates a summarized record for each day for the affected projects and tasks in the project unit.
Using the daily proration basis method reduces the chances of impacting period to date cost variance measures for January and February.
Certain financial plan types are included in summarization by default, while you must manually select others. Approved forecast and baseline budget versions of the following financial plan types are automatically included in summarization of project performance data:
Approved Revenue Budget
Approved Cost Budget
Primary Revenue Forecast
Primary Cost Forecast
Apart from the default financial plan types, you can include up to four others in summarization of project performance data.
The project manager must run summarization for the selected project using the Actions menu in the Project List region on the Project Performance Reporting dashboard. The project manager must use the Important Dates or the Data Updates window to update project performance data if the data is not current or if there are unprocessed transactions.
To update performance data for all projects in a project unit, the projects application administrator must run the Update Project Performance Data process. After you update project performance data you must generate key performance indicator (KPI) values again. If you have not chosen to generate KPI values automatically after updating project performance data, you should generate KPI values manually.
You must generate KPI values manually when you enable a new KPI for use and want to view it in the KPI watchlist. You may update data manually if you need to look at the data less frequently, such as, at the end of a period.
The following actions trigger performance data summarization:
Run the Update Project Performance Data process for a project from the Project Performance Dashboard or Projects Overview area.
Run or schedule the Update Project Performance Data process from the process scheduler.
Enable the reporting option on the project unit to summarize project data before generating key performance indicators.
Create revenue and invoice transactions.
Important
Summarized revenue and invoice transaction amounts appear in the revenue and invoice work area; however, these transactions do not appear in summarized data on the Project Performance Dashboard until the transactions are summarized using the Update Project Performance Data process.
The Period Start Date option allocates amounts based on the period start date. The Period End Date option allocates amounts based on the period end date. The Daily Proration option spreads plan amounts evenly across the plan duration.