Is open Plan Dead

D
David Kelly 👤 Member for 21 years 7 months

Much more excited to discover John Owen is not dead than Open Thingumy’s mortal status!!

J
John Owen 👤 Member for 21 years

Hi Joel,



I have a vested interest (Open Plan Product Manager) but Open Plan is far from dead. It’s very strong in aerospace, defense and government, less so in Oil&Gas/Construction and IT. Open Plan tends to be used on large projects where capacity, performance, flexibility, and integration are key factors. Of course Open Plan also benefits from being tied closely to Cobra, probably the leading Project Cost Management / Earned Value tool on the planet.



John

J
Joanne Foster 👤 Member for 22 years 4 months

5 years ago it was v2.6 stable and without too many bugs



v3.x has been a struggle with stability, performance and bugs...the latest version is *almost* there

P
Philip Jonker 👤 Member for 21 years 7 months

Hi Gary,



The last time I used OP was about 5 years ago, and it was fairly stable, being out of the "Old school" I still miss the old dos V4 OP programme which had few bugs, but, time has no boss, and we have to keep up to date. Let know about your OP experiences, I may have a tip or two for you.



Regards

P
Philip Jonker 👤 Member for 21 years 7 months

Hi Bill,



Agreed, I learnt on the drawing board, and the rest, but connected to computors early in life, and saw the picture

J
Joanne Foster 👤 Member for 22 years 4 months

Joel



I’m now on their latest version...but have not fully tested it (scarey)...so once i get around to it I’ll keep everyone updated on the newly discovered undocumented features!



At least now...it appears to be rolling up percent complete properly!!!



J

J
Joel Gilbert 👤 Member for 23 years 1 month

Hi Joanne,



I thought Open plan had sorted out their business, I guess I’ll stick to the old faithful package.



Thanks.

J
Joanne Foster 👤 Member for 22 years 4 months

Hermie



I know you have an unhealthy relationship with OPP...but let’s face it...making the schedule ’pretty’ doesn’t make it good software...or a good schedule!



Welcom need to have their a$$ kicked for releasing so many dodgey untested versions of OPPv3.x. With some of the releases over the past 18 months I wonder whether Welcom actually have a Test & Evaluation department!



J

H
Hermie LaO 👤 Member for 21 years 4 months

Hi Philip, Bill,



Open Plan is alive and doing very well.



I disagree that it is for computer geeks. It is very flexible and perhaps often misunderstood because of this.



Other systems looks better because they made their systems simple, forcing users to think towards a certain direction.



For example in most systems you are left with a pre-defined list of fields that you can use to define a bar in a gannt chart. Some extend this functionality by allowing custom fields. However you have to either manually change the content or run global changes to update it.



In Open Plan you can define the bar anyway you want. dynamically changing content as you progress the on the project.



Regards,

P
Philip Jonker 👤 Member for 21 years 7 months

Hi Bill,



Never thought you had blinkers, basically you are right, but give the rest a break. Open plan has a right to existence, as they have been through the mill. The question lies in does P3e and P3ec have any rights?????????????

Regards

Philip

J
Joanne Foster 👤 Member for 22 years 4 months

Australian Defence industry uses it heavily - the government organisation (Defence Material Organisation (DMO)) has in the last couple of years implemented it...and many of the contractors use it. DMO are starting to write into their contracts the requirement for OPP to be used.



Joanne

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