Not at all,

Current projects:
600 activity High Purity Water Filtration Plant (30 mil)
2000 activity new Hospital Bed Building (220 mil)
800 activity huge single family home (???)
800 activity Theater (20 mil)

I live and die by the client so these are not "my" schedules although I made them, update, analyze and modify them (except the hospital, I was supporting a more experienced scheduler as he had to use P6 for the first time). I would much rather them be 2 or 3 times the size.

In the past I have scheduled jobs anywhere form a couple hundred to tens of thousands of activities (All construction)

There is one part of P6 that no one has mentioned yet. P6Web.

Ill be the first to say that P6Web needs A LOT of work before it is a truly useful tool. It makes my job tougher as everything has to go through a web browser instead of directly into a program.

It does however open up the software/schedule to a bunch of players so data can be updated by the people actually preforming the work. There are goods and bads with letting others update a schedule but with properly trained people it would lead to removing almost all of the data entry part of a schedulers job.

Being a "youngster" myself, I actually learned P6 before P3, MS Project or SureTrak. I have used them all to schedule jobs. I know I can preform a task in P6 2 or 3 times faster than I can in an other software. Since I work on an hourly rate it keeps the clients happy.

Mike

P6 is, quite frankly, not that difficult to learn if you know P3 as opposed to the sales pitch you hear from Primavera representatives.

Here we go again. People are judging planners who criticize P6 as not well versed and experts in P6, grumpy old P3 experts and blah blah blah.

Let’s go to the details why I believe P6 is an overkill to many if not most of Primavera clients, then we discuss. Instead of trying to pontificate with doing a schedule with more than 100,000 activities.

I did not say P6 is dysfunctional, I even admitted it has more features than the P3. What I said was, it is an overkill software for many Primavera clients. I won’t be experessing my opinion on the subject if I don’t understand how these 2 softwares differ.

Anoon,

Your copy will always be outdated, at the speed Primavera is releasing updates and the in-betweens, the so called service packs so you don’t have to re-install the stuff every other month, you won’t be able to catch up.

But don’t worry P6 days are counted, sooner than later, in a few months, we will be in P7, P8, P9 …. Primavera will skip a few like P41 to avoid confusion with WWII airplanes.
These are all the same garbage can with a new cover.

The “Dark Ages” in scheduling started with P3e and it P3e/c (a garbage can for the construction industry) by about the year 2000, nine years ago. Many years lost, nothing new, just trying to catch up. No wizards to help us manage out-of-sequence, to help us manage delay claims, to help us truly audit all changes similar to Accounting software (a must in any serious accounting software), better ways and algorithms to manage resource leveling, yes we all know there will never be an absolute optimum solution, but something, managers do plan even when they do not have the optimum tools. And the list go on, will never end, if you will you might ask Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The concepts of Enterprise applications have been around for over 40 years, one of the pioneers was Artemis: from the mainframe era, where everything was connected to a single database on a mainframe computer. Primavera approach stayed in that era while Microsoft evolved into the PC era with an application that is either Stand Alone, as in Project Standard, or both, as in Project Professional; yes essentially a single product, no need for a scalable application, you go from stand alone to enterprise with the use of essentially the same product. Unfortunately the product itself does not meet the standards many of us would expect.

If a human being, then I must agree it is young, if a dog it is Old, if you call it software, then it is outdated.

P3 is doomed not because of demand, is doomed because Primavera decided to doom it, in the near future you won’t even be able to load it into your pc new operating systems, even if you could Companies will not be able to get a legal license.

Guess we are in LIMBO, I mean those of us who do not like P6 as well as those of us who do not need the Enterprise Stuff.

Bob

Might be in some future you’ll realize what is the basis for professional discussion and for project work.

Dieter

Dear All,


P6 is very ambitious in instigating the role of the planning team in the organization. In the 1st instance you will love it and will hate it after knowing the things you needed in order to fully utilize all the functions of P6. There will be time that you will come to think to use P6 with all the functions it offered or simply used P3 in keep it simple approach.

In order to effective using P6, the full support of the management/team is a must otherwise planners will be storing a lot of garbage in the computer.

Do we have a choice when the majority is shifting to P6???

I just hope by the time all the bugs are fixed, the standard P6 wants to dictate will be accepted by the industry. Then I can say the time I invested learning P6 is not wasted. Am still learning though.

My opinion….

Cheers..

This issue has started when Primavera focused more on their business than their clients.

I too use MSP, P3, P4 & P6. I have to admit among these 4 softwares, P6 has more features. But the question now, do we need all of these features? For some they may use all the functionalities but I would say for some, it’s an overkill.

It’s nice to have the EPS feature, but do all Primavera clients really need it? Why WBS, I can use activity codes instead. It will have the same result. When did the last time you use claim digger? If you work for a claims company, you could be using it regularly. The list will go on.

Personally, I would rather P3 was improved. But of course the computer geeks will argue that P3 has an obsolete system. For this issue, I can not argue because I’m not an expert on it. Who knows, it could only be a bluff.

Cheers,

Bob Benham:

Once again, I have deleted your post for rude and abusive language.

To further clarify why:
1) You used a (abbreviated) very insulting word. That is name-calling and abusive language, both in contradiction to Forum rule 2.
2) You suggested a fellow PP member was mentally sick. That is flaming/taunting. Again, in contradiction to rule 2.
3) You alleged a fellow PP member was abusing other members based on their nationality, despite the fact that they never even mentioned nationality in the post you a refering to. That is flaming.
4) You then finished with a further insult based on their nationality. This is of course highly hypocritical as well as abusive.


I repeat my comment the last time I had to delete your post: If you cannot be civil, this is not the forum for you.

John,

Based on my experienced of using Primavera P3, P5 & P6 in my planning & scheduling, P6 is the best tools. It is more easy than the other software because I know the functionality of it.

Try to use and familiarize the function and then tell us what is better. Just need more practice.

Regards,

Arnold

If you are in a large company the benefits of a enterprise-wide solution are indispensable. In fact, if you are a large company’s lone scheduler, working in a standalone environment with 20 or so project managers, P5 or P6 is a must. Just my opinion.