MS project latest version

MAHADEVAN,



"it is true that MS Project is much better today than before" - indeed!



Perhaps the statement from Aurora “If this same problem is resource-leveled in MS Project 2003 or 2007 the result is 9 days….” is true for MS Project 2003 and 2007 but not for MS Project 2010 where the Beta Release results are equal to P6 and Aurora if using Standard Resource Leveling and better if allowing activity splitting. With Spider Project I could get two different 7 days results. the best possible solution, one with activity splitting and another without splitting.



At $599.95 US dollars, pre-purchase on the Web, it is a bargain and who knows perhaps final release is better than the Beta Release.



I never found MS Project good enough for medium sized construction jobs, but for scheduling of small jobs within small shops always was an alternative. Not sure all CPM calculation issues are solved in the new version, but I doubt it.



Best Regards,

Rafael

Hi Vladimir,

Sorry if I post it on wrong forum and thanks for quick response and waiting for more info.



Moderator,

Kindly please move it to the right forum if possible. Thanks



With kind regards,

Rodel

Hi Rodel,

why did you ask these questions here and not in Spider Project forum? I will give the full answer there later today (it is morning in Moscow and I shall have many meetings).

Short answer - Spider Project is used by many large companies as their corporate PM system with portfolio management.

Last year at PMI COS conference representatives of Romanian Telecom spoke about using Spider Project for management of their portfolio that consisted of approximately 2000 projects in 10 regions of Romania.

Spider Project is used for management of the portfolio of more than 200 construction projects for preparation of 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. It is used for management of the project portfolio of Russian Pacific Area development.

There are many other examples when Spider Project is used for management of multi-billion programs and portfolios consisting of many hundreds projects and planners that work together with the portfolio model.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Hi Vladimir,



I know there are do and don’t on every planning software and everyone is aware that every planning software have there own specialty.

I know a lot of functions in P6 that are very useful and if manage correctly will give a lot of benefits to the users and organization.

I cannot comment on spider project because I haven’t got a chance of using it. I read a lot of white paper and information about spider project on the internet and I even downloaded the demo and it looks very promising and so many functions that are very new to me. I’m not familiar on the software yet so a little bit of trial and error which eventually going there. The user might be so skilful to use the software to familiarise all the function but that’s not an issue.



Mostly on a large scale organisation was involves on a large project where a Project Control groups are huge and composed of different key players. On alliance contract composed of different company are having multiple projects and different site at the same time.

Now my queries are these and I know you are the best person to ask with.



In Spider Project:

1)     How to handle a big project using different key players?

2)     How it is manage on a big picture where all key players are doing at the same time (i.e. multiple planners having there own area, cost controller and portfolio management)?

3)     How handle cost management, schedule at the same time with different key players?

4)     How to handle multiple projects at the same time?

5)     How the information’s are shared including the load of works of each key player?

6)     Is spider project looking to upgrade and get into enterprise and Portfolio Project Management?



In P6, we handle multiple projects in one centralise server database where every key player have access with limited security settings. Cost management and scheduling are handled by different key players so task of each key member are not overloaded and concentrated on their areas where a management level have overall controls and get an overall picture at once. Handling multiple projects is easy and manageable per project or per enterprise level. Each key player has access on online communication and update there own task even on different locations. Is this also possible in Spider Projects or looking to it in the future? Or is it possible to install Spider Projects on a server and more than one user can use at the same time?



Thank you and hoping some feedback from you.



Best Regards,

Rodel

Hi Balaji,

please teach us how to feel which software is better without looking and testing.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

I personally feel P6 is much better than MSP or other softwares.

Ranish,



Judging from the obvious dissatisfaction with P6 I would say the contrary;



We planners hope P6 disappears so the better products already available establish themselves.



Even users of P6 such as NASA use P6 as a data entry to load a database and then use an external engine. I believe it is still not good enough but a workable solution for those hooked on P6.



Even if P6 had a powerful engine, many of us see no benefit on a product lacking much needed functionality, with an obstructive interface that get in your way especially when your job is a Stand Alone Job as most construction jobs are. We cannot submit a schedule to an Owner with relationships to another contract and claim any delay by the Owner will impact other jobs and so its liability will be expanded. By contract conditions we are required to keep our jobs/contracts separate from other jobs/contracts.



Disgracefully P6 ended up being used to store hundreds of Stand Alone Jobs, when in reality it was designed for the enterprise jobs, sharing resources among hundreds of jobs. Well perhaps P6 can be used as an expensive file organizer good to draw GANTT Charts of multiple Jobs while using better engines from other vendors. It is a product Primavera bought from another developer and tried to tailor it to the Construction industry by using P3ec for its name, P3enterprise Construction Flavor, a marketing strategy as to relate this product to an already successful product P3, but just that.



MAHADEVAN dissatisfaction with P6 is just the opposite reaction old P3 users had, but it came of age at the worst moment, when a lousy product came to the hands of Primavera. Until P6 disappears expressions of dissatisfaction with the product will continue growing.



Best Regards,

Rafael

True, at the moment MSP cant stand in fornt of P6 features. Did anyone imagine lotus123 getting wiped out by MSexcel or wordstar by MSexcel...



We planners hope P6 stays, Anyhow gents read this.



http://www.tech-res.co.uk/blog/?p=548

MAHADEVAN,



I would recommend you to look elsewhere for an upgrade to P6, but in no case to pick up a downgrade. I understand you very well as a year ago we were looking for a substitute for Old P3/SureTrak, we tried P6 on the hope it was an improvement over P3e the first version of P6 which we never liked and eventually discarded, we found it to be more of the same, a bad interface and full of bugs. Then latter we discovered how limited it is at modeling resource usage and how bad it is at resource leveling, not to mention how difficult it was for the average user to transfer data from external sources.



Do your homework but don’t downgrade, make your choice from a selection of better choices. If your average scheduler cannot perform an installation of the software by themselves then something is wrong, maybe it is the software or is it your people, in any case get rid of the problem better sooner than latter.



Best regards,

Rafael

Mahadevan,

it is true that MS Project is much better today than before; however it is not better than P6 or Sciforma PSNext, or Spider, or AstaDev Powerproject.

the MS Project being compared to P6 is MS Project Server, a very complicated bundle of software apps: MS Project Professional, the planning and scheduling app; MS Project Server, that makes a bridge between MSP Pro and the MS SQL Server database; Project Web Access, the Internet Explorer only html interface to be compared with PrimaveraWeb; Windows SharePoint Services, where you will manage Documents, Issues and Thresholds; SharePoint Portal if you need a project forum and workflow system; MS Outlook to insert daily tasks into the project plans, and vice versa; ...

everything is 100% MS proprietary, and works well when somebody is dedicated to make it working.

the bad point is that MS Project Pro does not have all the scheduling and calculating functionalities that P6 has; therfore, you will use something like an american 18wheel truck powered by a Ford sedan engine.

I much prefer working with a scheduling app developped by a specialised company like Primavera, Sciforma, AstaDev, ... than with a MS app; MS people are not that bad, but they do so many different things ...

Alexandre

Mahadevan,

MS people say MS Project 2010 is MUCH BETTER than anything else, including P6; as they do not know Spider or Aurora they do not mention these apps.

True, MSP 2010 has some new functionalities; the question is: are they useful and will they be used by professional planners? Beside, MSP 2010 computations are still poor, and its hability to manage huge projects or to use CSI format activty codes is non existent.

Alexandre

MAHADEVAN,



I believe P6 still is less bad than MS Project. Both are weak at resource leveling as shown in the following reference.



http://www.stottlerhenke.com/products/aurora/Turnaround/2009-10-01_Auro…



As you can see P6 was less bad than MS Project but Aurora, unknown to me until now, can perform better. To me is like anything else except MS Project is better than P6. My opinion is not only based on the limitation on resource leveling but on the lack of much needed functionalities to better model your schedules.



It would be interesting to model the sample job into MS Project 2010 to see if there is some improvement or not, then we will be able to compare apples to apples and avoid subjectivity on whether you like better the screen colors of one software over the other, these are no paint software.



Is just a matter of numbers, numbers don’t lie, people do. Even the guys at NASA know that Aurora is not good enough either, not to mention P6 which they use for data entry and storage. The following 7 days result by Spider Project was by selecting the appropriate resource leveling algorithm as even some optimization algorithms work better under certain schedules while others work better in other occasions. Your software should provide you with several such algorithms for your choice.







Best regards,

Rafael

Where did your heard it? Do you have any references?