By Ravi Shankar, PgMP

The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management (PJT) application offers a key feature that is not yet widely used but delivers valuable functionality: Program Reporting. This 2 part blog article and our May 4th Webinar will help you understand how to use Program Reporting in your organization.

Program Level reporting, as distinct from managing the Program itself, is the process wherein related Projects are linked to the Program Project. While the Program itself is a Project and hence could have its activities for costs, budgets, revenue, etc., it could also be the recipient of rolled-up data of related Child Projects, whose financial, Workplan, and Progress information is visible in the Performance Management Tab of the Program.

For the Program level roll-up reporting, we link the individual child projects to the lowest WBS of the program project. A related child Project could also be a Program, i.e., it could have a roll-up of Projects to itself.

All the Projects within the Program roll hierarchy should have the same Project currency, follow the same time-phased settings for planning options and use the PA or GL calendar settings.

Financial (Actual costs, revenue, etc.), Workplan (Earned Value, etc.), and Progress information all roll up to the Program level in the Reporting tab of the Program project. We can view the information on rolled-up Projects or the Program project by selecting the appropriate radio box on the reporting page.

The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management application creates and maintains links between the current working versions of Workplans of linked projects and the program project. Typically, we would review and publish the recent functional versions of linked Projects and roll up the Progress and related information to the Program.

Program Project Overview

Oracle Project Management delivers roll-up reporting at the Program level by rolling up work plans, progress, and financial information of linked child projects. This information is visible in Reporting Tab of “Program project” in different performance metrics areas and at its WBS level. In addition, the Oracle Project Management Program Reporting feature includes linking and rolling up projects owned by multiple operating units.

We must distinguish the difference between Program level reporting and Program level management. PJT delivers the capability to report the rolled-up information at the Program level. They still need to be managed independently, however, from the planning, executing, control, and management of the linked projects. Further, the rolled-up information for budgets and forecasts at the program level is just in the reporting tab. It does not roll up into the financial account of the Program project. In other words, the program project must have its Budget and Forecast. Program-level management and related details need to be addressed through different options like custom reporting using OBIEE, etc.

PJT provides the program linking framework in the User guide. Child Projects are related to the lowest task of the Program Project. The critical consideration is that all the projects should share the same project currency, regardless of their Project Operating Unit.

While theoretically, there is no limitation of linking multiple child projects beneath a Program project, care must be exercised in designing the roll-up based on the related projects’ WBS and whether they are referencing child projects. The critical objective of Program reporting is to view the rolled-up information for financial, progress, and work plans for related projects. Suppose these projects need to be reviewed in detail by grouping them. In that case, one must evaluate alternate options such as OBIEE reporting and other reporting analyses to decide the ideal choice of performance and timely data availability.