Schedule Update Review

 Schedule Cracker currently analyzes schedules as a single schedule, compare it to any other schedule, or compare metric values to more than two schedules. You can simply load all your monthly schedule submittals and see how values changed over time and what the estimated values are in the future.  It doesn't need P6 to be in your machine as it runs its own engine independently from Primavera.  Currently it has Lean Six Sigma, Buffer %, Hit % and Miss% which is not in any of the current software in the market.  It supports only P5& P6 but very soon, more supported software will be added.

Hi,

I am a new planner don’t have much experience, I had very confusing problem when reassigning the resources to my plan in P6. When ever I edit some resource the duration of the activity became zero. And noticed that when I had completed almost all the activities of that WBS group. All of my activities were task dependent none of them was resource dependent. I discussed that with a friend of mine but he couldn’t satisfy me. Can any one tell me why was that happened. Thanx.

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Ron, I didn't have a chance to meet you before but I would like to.  Schedule Cracker is doing great.  It is moving up so quickly because of its analytics capabilities, easiness of use, and robustness.  Off course, analyzing Primavera P5/P6 is not the end but the start.  I have a lot of additions in the development phase and it should be coming in quarterly updates.  A number of innovative techniques are presented in current version (1.2) and much more will be presented in the next versions. I am working with a great team of software and business intelligence experts to develop state of the art analytics software for project management. Thanks for checking.

Ron, I didn't have a chance to meet you before but I would like to.  Schedule Cracker is doing great.  It is moving up so quickly because of its analytics capabilities, easiness of use, and robustness.  Off course, analyzing Primavera P5/P6 is not the end but the start.  I have a lot of additions in the development phase and it should be coming in quarterly updates.  A number of innovative techniques are presented in current version (1.2) and much more will be presented in the next versions. I am working with a great team of software and business intelligence experts to develop state of the art analytics software for project management. Thanks for checking.

You have to differentiate between analytics tool and scheduling tool.  Schedule Cracker is an analytics tool with 194 different metrics. It supports Primavera P5/P6 so far.  It is standalone software so you don't need a scheduling tool on your PC. There is a number of metrics relates to remaining duration and there are more metrics coming in the next quarterly update. 

You have to differentiate between analytics tool and scheduling tool.  Schedule Cracker is an analytics tool with 194 different metrics. It supports Primavera P5/P6 so far.  It is standalone software so you don't need a scheduling tool on your PC. There is a number of metrics relates to remaining duration and there are more metrics coming in the next quarterly update. 

Hi, Mo.

I looked at Schedule Cracker.  Looks like it has some nice features, and anything that improves schedule analysis is very valuable.

Unfortunately, unlike Sprider Project (and the Sumatra.com add-on to MS Project). it doesn't seem to compute DRAG, which is absolutely essential for pulling in a slipping schedule.  The ability to focus either on a sink activity, or to target any activity or milestone that needs to be pulled in, and determine both the critical path to that milestone and the DRAG of the CP activities based on the remaining durations, is a critical (if you'll pardon the expression!) function of schedule analysis.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

Dr. MOhamed HEgab, it is nice to hear from you!  How is your new Schedule Cracker software doing?  I was surprised to see your entry into the P6 schedule comparison field as it is getting quite crowded.  I miss the good old days when the only competition to Schedule Analyzer software was Claim Digger.

Hi Mo,

the question was not about anomalities but about tracking changes in P3.1. It is different task.

In Spider Project all project history is kept. Any two schedules can be compared.

So one can get the reports on what was changed since last update, or since any update made earlier.

It is also possible to analyze what happened between any two moments in the past and to get the reports on trends of any project parameters.

But P3.1 does not keep the history.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Did you try an independent tool such as schedule cracker (www.schedulecracker.com)?  It does the job with very nice reports and lots of features. It detects anomalies in the schedule and sort problematic activities for you. They offer it for free 14 day full functional trial.

There used to be two products available for comparing P3 schedule updates; Claim Digger and Schedule Analyzer Professional. Primavera stopped selling Claim Digger for P3 at the start of this year. That leaves Schedule Analyzer, which does a lot more than just compare two schedules. You can read more on-line at http://scheduleanalyzer.com/. Good luck!

The answer depends upon which scheduling software you are using.