Lesson 3 of 5
Tasks, timeboxes and teams
9 min
Once the project has a template and a scope, it needs a calendar and people. In SAP Cloud ALM, the calendar is made of timeboxes, the people are organized in teams with project roles, and the work is a set of tasks of different types. Getting these right is what lets everyone open the tool on Monday and see their own work.
Timeboxes
Timeboxes are managed in Projects and Setup. The SAP Activate phases come predefined; you set their dates and add sprints, milestones and releases. SAP's learning content suggests starting from the planned go-live date and working backward, and giving Explore enough time, because Fit-to-Standard is usually the most time-intensive part.
- PreparePhase timeboxProject setup, onboarding, roadmap tasks assigned
- ExplorePhase timeboxFit-to-Standard waves; Explore quality gate at the end
- Realize sprints 1 to 6Sprint timeboxesThree-week build sprints with user stories assigned
- Realize sprints 7 and 8Sprint timeboxesIntegration testing and final acceptance
- DeployPhase timebox and milestonesDress rehearsals, cutover and the Q3 go-live milestone
- RunPhase timeboxHypercare and the first post-go-live update
Teams and project roles
A team is a set of users with assigned project roles, such as product owner or test manager. Cloud ALM provides a predefined list of project roles from SAP Activate, and you can add your own. Creating a project automatically creates a default PMO team, which cannot be deleted. Larger projects add teams by country, line of business or organizational structure. Roadmap tasks are assigned to roles automatically, which is why mapping people to roles early matters: unassigned roles mean unowned tasks.
Remember the difference between project roles and authorization roles. Project roles describe what a person does in the project and route tasks. Authorization roles, assigned in Cloud ALM user management, decide what a person can change. A key user can be a product owner in a team while holding only tester authorizations.
Task types
| Type | What it is | Contoso example |
|---|---|---|
| Roadmap task | Generated from the SAP Activate roadmap | Prepare the test strategy |
| Project task | Created by the team for organizational or operational work | Book workshop rooms for wave 2 |
| Requirement | A business need, usually from Fit-to-Standard | Consolidated monthly invoice for fleet customers |
| User story | A sprint-sized piece of build work, with story points | Group deliveries into one monthly invoice |
| Sub-task | A granular step inside a story or task; inherits its timebox | Configure the billing type |
| Quality gate | A checkpoint with a checklist at a phase end | Explore quality gate |
| Risk task | A tracked project risk, in recent releases | Second data load may slip |
SAP's guide notes that user stories and project tasks offer similar functions but serve different purposes: user stories are for user-facing build and configuration value and can be assigned to features, while project tasks are for organizational work. A sub-task inherits its parent's timebox; a user story can have its own.
Assigning and tracking
- Assign tasks to a timebox, scope, team, role, assignee and tags; use mass change for bulk updates.
- Use the Gantt view to maintain dependencies between tasks, for example data load before SIT.
- Agree tag conventions early, such as wave numbers or workstreams, so filters and reports work.
- Use the overview and cross-project analysis to see phases, sprints, milestones and progress.
What would you do?
Three weeks into Explore, half of Contoso's roadmap tasks show no assignee. The PMO dashboard looks empty and nobody owns Explore deliverables. What is the most likely cause and fix?
- Timeboxes hold Activate phases, sprints, milestones and releases; plan backward from go-live.
- Teams combine users and project roles; the default PMO team cannot be deleted.
- Task types include roadmap tasks, project tasks, requirements, user stories, sub-tasks, quality gates and risk tasks.
- Assign tasks by timebox, scope, team, role, assignee and tags; use dependencies for critical sequences.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which timeboxes come predefined in a Cloud ALM project?
2. Which team is created automatically with a new project?
3. Why map people to project roles early?
4. How does a sub-task's timebox work?