change for better or worst???

David,

What you call the database we call project portfolio. And keeping everything in one database is not an advantage. In my notebook I keep a portfolio of construction projects for preparation of 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi (approximately 200 projects), and another portfolio of projects for development of Russian Pacific Area (approximately 100 projects in 10000 km from Sochi), and other portfolios of smaller size that do not share resources or finances with other portfolios. I would not like to mix these portfolios in a single database.

Keeping all data in a single database does not add value, an ability to create portfolio model that permits to manage portfolio schedule, budget, resources, etc. does. An ability to manage several portfolios is an advantage.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

P.S. To become the software for planning the enterprise future the software shall be able to simulate both expenses and financing, material consumption and supply. It is necessary to be able to calculate portfolio schedule taking into account project priorities, resource, supply, and financing limitations. It is necessary to manage costs using multiple cost components and multiple currencies, to apply discounting, calculate NPV, IRR and other financial indicators, to be able to manage parallel budgets for the same works, and a lot more. It is not enough to keep projects in one database. Are these functions in your list of future P6 improvements?

Vladimir,

I would define the primary purpose of P6 to be a system with all of a company's future  "work" (and how we define that is fairly open) in one database. This work may or may not be performed. Everything that a large corporation will do AND  might do down to painting yellow lines in the car park.

Most of this work requires scheduling, some of it requires levelling. But having all of the data in one place is the mission.

The "journey" is to do for analysis of the future what systems like SAP have done for the past.  We all have our criticisms of SAP.  But delivering a consolidated balance sheet for the world's largest companies within a day or so of the month end date is astonishing. Perfect analysis of the past is of course only half the answer.  We need to do the same for the future. Now that everyone, finally,  knows that SAP which is perhaps the world's best production planning system is just no use at project planning, it is P6 that European Oil and Gas has almost universally chosen for this job.

The sheer diversity of a large multi-national companies activities do not lend themseves to common coding and shared proceedures. This is the challenge, every project manager thinks their project is unique, with unique requirements. We need to fit all of them into one database.

I have been working as a consultant on and off with some companies since the introduction of "P3e" all those years ago. None of them have finished the job yet! But some are close.

The obstacles are so, so familiar.  Poor data quality, selfish office politics, lack of training, unwritten proceedures - and everyone thinks its a software problem!

David,

I have thought that primary purpose of PM software is decision support. If the software answers to any “what if” question, finds best possible options, and provides all reports necessary for project/portfolio management decision making then it is really useful.

What is primary purpose of P6? And what journey do you mean?

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Rafael,

Everything you say is true, but I am working not just with expert planners who work for construction companies, but owners as well.

In a single planning meeting there might be an expert from a contruction company, a representative of the drilling department who "do not need to plan" because "they know what to do next" and a manager who is too embarrassed to admit they do not know where float comes from. And we have to make an integrated plan with all of their input.

A "better" project plan will not come from providing the construction company's expert a system with more functionality. It can only come about by integrating the beginners into this whole new landscape.  Our new integrated world can only move forward at the speed of the worst planner, not the best.

And of course P6 is NOT a planning tool. It is a project management environment. It is NOT an upgrade to P3, it is a new way of thinking about the whole future in one database.  Yes, it does planning - but that is not its primary purpose.

I understand the frustrations of the construction company expert planner. I hear them everywhere I go, but I'm afraid they will just have to wait for the beginners to catch up. P6 is the start of a new journey, not the next step in the old one.

David,

1) In my industry, Building Construction, markup is so low there is no place for poor estimates. Perhaps mechanical engineers are not good at it, but for a Civil Engineer estimating is a matter of life and death as on average US Contractors make an 8% profit on their volume of work, there is not much room to spare with regard to costs and manpower.

2) Fear, this reminds me the "Gray Wave” a common argument of P6 people trying to sell something under the premise new has to be better just because it is new face even if using older functionality. They are using negative reinforcement and this is bad, positive reinforcement usually yields better results.

By the way new MS Project 2010 can undo resource leveling, they call it “clear leveling” is not hard to find it in the ribbon. MS Project is not my favorite, perhaps the least favorite after P6 who has earned the distinction by a huge margin.

3) About the "Gray Wave", I got over it after I got rid of my older Primavera licenses, there are new software better than old P3, a software so bad at it I never used for resource loading/leveling, there are newer software better than Primavera in all flavors other than “Old P3” or “new P6 with old functionality”. I have new software that is better, it is that  simple, and the excuse for blaming others not wanting to learn P6 is vanishing, it is becoming an Old/Gray argument by itself. 

4) "if I can't do the math my self, I won't trust the computer" - This is perhaps a subset of 3)”

To me this is a very a very backward thinking, like saying I cannot use a computer because I do not know programming, or I cannot use P6 because I am not an IT person, or I cannot drive a car because I am not an automobile mechanic.

If you are an engineer doing some finite-elements structural analysis you do not manually check the math using a finite element matrix that would be so large you would need a basketball court to print and many years just to manually get the inverse of a matrix, perhaps your first mathematical step. An approximate method shall do it, all you need is to verify the output, and perhaps compare results against other software or problems with known output values.

To verify and validate the output of a resource leveling routine is even easier, just check if it is viable and compare results against other routines. The one that consistently gets viable and shorter duration jobs is better. This is the way some universities compare resource leveling algorithms against each other, they use a set of schedules specifically designed to test the algorithms under different scenarios.

5)"It's P6 doing the planning for me"

Well this is new to me, are you sure you can throw the CAD drawings and a scan of the specs to P6 and it will deliver a schedule? Perhaps planning is not that important at all and improvisation yields better results.

Regards,

Rafael

"So, where is the problem that you cannot sell resource leveling when resources are at premium"

Excellent question.  It's not the software. I would say:

1) Poor estimates.  You see we need the correct manhour estimates,  not just from one department of the company - say Maintenance, but also operations, projects, turnarounds, drilling, etc.  If we do not have complete manhour requirements form a dozen departments and as many different companies/contractors, it is hard to level against a common resource. This is primarily a contractual issue we need to sort.

2) Fear. Microsoft Project has done us serious harm here. Anyone in my industry who has tried resource levelling in MSP before they come to P6 never wants to do it again. In P6 the F9 button to schedule undos resource levelling. No such one button escape in MSP

3) The "Gray Wave". This is our terminology for the log jam of senior people who are close to retirement, and do not want to learn anything new.  Our industry has a particular problem with this. HR departments recruited based on old projections as to how long the oil and gas would last. These projections were wrong and there is another 20 years to go, and our demographics are poor. Not enough management in the 30-45 age group who want to do the work a 21st century way.

4) "if I can't do the maths my self, I won't trust the computer" - This is perhaps a subset of 3)

5) "It's P6 doing the planning for me" - many people believe that levelling is allowing P6 to make planning decisons! Of course this is no more true than scheduling making planning decisons. The most important planning decsions are made AFTER a plan is scheduled or levelled.

"So, where is the problem that you cannot sell resource leveling when resources are at premium"

Excellent question.  It's not the software. I would say:

1) Poor estimates.  You see we need the correct manhour estimates,  not just from one department of the company - say Maintenance, but also operations, projects, turnarounds, drilling, etc.  If we do not have complete manhour requirements form a dozen departments and as many different companies/contractors, it is hard to level against a common resource. This is primarily a contractual issue we need to sort.

2) Fear. Microsoft Project has done us serious harm here. Anyone in my industry who has tried resource levelling in MSP before they come to P6 never wants to do it again. In P6 the F9 button to schedule undos resource levelling. No such one button escape in MSP

3) The "Gray Wave". This is our terminology for the log jam of senior people who are close to retirement, and do not want to learn anything new.  Our industry has a particular problem with this. HR departments recruited based on old projections as to how long the oil and gas would last. These projections were wrong and there is another 20 years to go, and our demographics are poor. Not enough management in the 30-45 age group who want to do the work a 21st century way.

4) "if I can't do the maths my self, I won't trust the computer" - This is perhaps a subset of 3)

5) "It's P6 doing the planning for me" - many people believe that levelling is allowing P6 to make planning decisons! Of course this is no more true than scheduling making planning decisons. The most important planning decsions are made AFTER a plan is scheduled or levelled.

David,

For whatever reason I am convinced you are good, very good at scheduling and have the practical view on the issues only years of experience can provide.

You said:

“Our offshore world is of course a perfect opportunity for resource leveling and as the plant and equipment in our world gets older, the maintenance workload increases, and the number of beds stays constant.”

So, where is the problem that you cannot sell resource leveling when resources are at premium, at the audience or at sales? It cannot be on you, not a statement but believe it a fact. I believe the problem is on the product being sold, that perhaps is so bad at resource modeling and leveling the audience sees no benefit, and you know it.

Perhaps P6 is bad at resource leveling algorithm, but this is not all behind the issue on resource allocation, there is more. Today more advanced software use the concepts of multi-resource (Crews) and partial assignments (Workload) without these even basic resource loading is a pain. When I was a Primavera user we did not resource loaded our jobs, even old P3/SureTrak were bad at it, we would use “soft links” only to solve some issues, and frequently found we missed a few and in need to solve the crisis in a hurry. Now at a click of the mouse I resource load entire crews with multiple resources, skills, productivity and workloads, it is a whole new game, all from reference books that represent the company norms, the result of many years of experience.

About Enterprise/Portfolio Management, this is common functionality of most software, and should be encouraged to be used more frequently, here I agree it is good to have it, a must have for large corporations.

Regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

There is very little shift work in Oil and Gas. Our primary resource issue is the number of beds on an offshore platform. We no longer do "hot bedding" so each bed is only used by one person. So if you have a total of 80 beds, and you put 20 men on night shift, only 60 men are available for day shift.

Some of the big onshore plants do have shift patterns during big plant shutdowns. These are unusual.

Our offshore world is of course a perfect opportunity for resource leveling, and as the plant and equipment in our world gets older, the maintenance workload increases, and the number of beds stays constant.

It is very difficult to "sell" resource leveling to an engineering audience who expect to understand the arithmetic the computer is performing from first principles before they will accept it. I have been doing this selling job since 1975 and I still do it almost every day. Scheduling is just base 10 addition and subtraction, and leveling is a non-parametric polynomial incomplete problem. I doubt if I could do the minimum moment matrix algebra I could when I was younger, and I'm supposed to be the expert!

These beds are shared by maintenance, operations, projects, catering, drilling, well engineering,and management. There can be easily be a hundred projects "owned" by a dozen separate groups of people working for the same number of companies. They all want all the beds.

So our challenge has been to get all of these disparate groups to a shared level of competence. To plan in the same way. To estimate using the same norms. It does sometimes feel like a "lowest common denominator" solution! P6 has created for the first time an environment where this is a possibility. My "average" customer still has a long way to go to exploit fully what P6 offers in this regard. The cultural change from silo-planning to enterprise-planning dwarfs any issues of software functionality.

Class is arriving..... I better start work...

David,

I am very interested in your list of facilities that you would like to have. Can you share it with us? Maybe in Spider Project forum? I hope that some of them are not supported by Spider Project now and we will be able to improve it with your help.

We have many thousands customers in 28 countries including the USA. By the way, the easy sale was done when our future American customer asked us to level his project that started on November 1 and finished on October 30 in his P6 schedule. When leveled by Spider finish date for the same project became July 14. When people count money they select the best.

But most Primavera users do not load resources in their schedules and do not level them (at least automatically). So I agree that they will not appreciate most Spider Project advantages.

But there are other advantages that anybody will appreciate – Spider Project works with quantities (volumes) of work, keeps project archives, reports trends, uses corporate databases of any kind of norms like unit price, material requirements per volume unit, resource productivities, etc. Even most simple schedules can benefit from this. What to select depends on requirements, the requirements depend on project planning and management culture. And of course Spider Project exports to XER, so this is not a problem.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

David,

By hard lags, do you mean what we call Strict/Strong? They got to be on a one by one basis, a rule across the board wont't do it.

We can export to .XER but not two software works exactly alike:

• We have teams that provide for correct math when doing work in shifts and the duration of the activity is determined by the resources on various shifts.
• We have superior resource leveling so when recalculating the network P6 will project longer job duration, this can be an issue, especially when performing a TIA.
• We have partial assignments that allows a resource be shared among activities.
• We have multiple WBS so if the Owner requires his and we use a couple of our own there is no problem.
• And the list go on.

I do not have P6 so I cannot tell you how much is lost, my experience was with P3e for several years and a few P6 trials by my clients, they decided not to buy and hire an outsider to work the CPM, they have to manage the day to day by manually guessing the schedule. The Owner got what they are paying for, a CPM by an external consultant, updated monthly and nobody looks at it.  Pretending the Contractor is going to delegate the administration of the job to some keyboard jockey is naive.

“But to cut straight to the chase, the idea that we might explain to an American industry that the best software to use is Russian is simply not going to happen.” Well, they learned Toyota cars are good and Camry is the bestselling model in America. I still remember in my toddler days “Made in Japan” was a joke, and was too young to remember who launched the first satellite into space.

Who pay does not make it correct nor a good choice for Owners to require substandard software when some Contractors can do better with other software. For some jobs it might even be MS Project, a software with a better resource leveling algorithm than P6 as per an university study using many standard schedules specifically designed to test under various scenarios the resource leveling algorithm, the report has not been released yet, but as soon as I get a hold on it will let all PP members know about it.

Just tell me if P6 can correctly model the following single activity job with shifts.

Activity 1   500cm rock excavation

Resource 1 production 10cm/hr  and works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10hrs/day

Resource 2 production 15cm/hour and works on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10 hrs/day

If activity starts on Monday:

Monday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm

Tuesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm

Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm

Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm

Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 50 cm in about 3 hours

Activity will take 3 days 3 hours.

If activity starts on Wednesday :

Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm

Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm

Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm

Friday =>> Resource 2 will produce 100 cm in about 7 hours

Activity will take 2 days 7 hours.

If your software is not capable of modeling the above, simple shift work on a single activity, then you are using the wrong tool. Every time the activity is delayed, the distribution of work is shifted and the activity duaration migh change, when you have many such activities and work on different hour shifts, different days it can become quite complicated. Distributing work by hand is nuts.

In the Oil and Gas Industry, do you work in shifts?

Regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

I have been involved in assessing, recommending, training and consulting in computerised project management systems for thirty five years. Primarily in Oil & Gas, but some nuclear and defence as well. The clients and projects I get involved with tend to be as large as they come. Practically my entire industry, European Oil and Gas, has chosen Primavera. I am partially responsible for that. I know of one large corporation who has invested staggering amounts of money in using MSP instead, and yes opening 40,000 maintenance work-orders in MSP is as ugly as it gets. In my unashamedly expert opinion, Spider Project has by a very long way the best scheduling and levelling facilities. But to cut straight to the chase, the idea that we might explain to an American industry that the best software to use is Russian is simply not going to happen. You gave quite a list of your favourite Spider facilities that it would be nice to have in P6, you missed the one I would like most – hard lags. Resource levelling without them is not easy. But I have a list probably as long as yours of facilities that, as an “expert” I would like to have in P6. I have trained well over 500 users in P6 and its antecedents. The proportion of those who would understand and be able to use the “extra” facilities in Spider is, well I do not wish to be unkind to the majority, but less than half. Most of them find the range of facilities in P6 intimidating. At its heart P6 is a cost-planning tool for Owners. That these Owners want their contractors to use the same system is hardly surprising. They used to mandate Artemis, now they insist on Primavera. Indeed it is now becoming common in my world that contractors are obliged to use the Owner’s Primavera system rather than their own. Creating the “Integrated Plan” is much easier if there is only one source of project controls data. This is not going away any time soon. The bottom line is who pays who. Perhaps, just perhaps, if you can export a .XER file from Spider they might not notice!

Sajid,

No, it is not ORACLE, as a corporation they must try as hard as they can, it is their responsibility to their stockholders, the issue is within our owners, our designers and our professional institutions that do not stand for what is correct. It is not that ORACLE is too aggressive, they are playing by the rules; it is that others do not have the means to be as aggressive and break “old” stereo types they bought with the Primavera name.

Owners and designers believe they are doing some good to their jobs and the industry by supporting single software because it brings a common ground, they are wrong.

1. Many are ignorant of the capabilities of other software and do not know many are better or superior choice. Many cannot understand  that some contractors need the superior power of their software. Perhaps the most notable example is when the job requires the use of shifts and their software cannot do the math.
2. It promotes a monopoly. Some say mafia in NY is good because stabilizes costs to NY Contractors, well they belong to this group that advocate for what is wrong under the premise that the end justifies the means. They are missing the means as well as the ends.
3. It mandates for the use of substandard software when others are in need of superior functionality. For a few jobs, not all, I need functionality for shifts, for all my jobs I need multiple WBS, for all my jobs we are concerned about timely delivery therefore the resource leveling algorithm must be good not substandard. It can be demonstrated that other software are superior in each of these tasks, my choice is superior in all of these tasks, obviously superior in those functionalities nonexistent within P6.
4. It promotes complacency and holds the development of new knowledge. Some of the new software is just a new face, capable of working under the new operating systems but that are bringing nothing new to the table. Kind of an old engine on a new body.
5. It gives others the false impression they can control the job when it is the Contractor who is at the driving wheel. In reality they fail when their pre-qualification procedure do fail.

Sajid, same as you many are happy with P6, for others is what they only know, perhaps they do not need advanced functionalities and it will be enough, in such case it is you who shall decide by yourself, not others. 

Regards,

Rafael

I am not very happy with the way P6 goes. P3 was upto the mark for most utilities in Project Management. 

Maybe Oracle is trying too aggressively. 

Regards

Rafael

I truely agree with you that the software used should be purely the choice of the people controlling the project.

This whole world is filled with stereo types.....The ones who choose their own path are harmed by the present but always remembered and respected by the future generation.

Best Regards

Shareef A Azeez

Shareef,

I have nothing against P6, my issues are with the people that force you at gun point to use it. My target is to make this people realize that there are many other software out there that are a best fit to many, that forcing a Contractor to change planning software as if underwear is wrong.

At the times of P3 I was whiling to accept it at gun point, it was even my choice in the form of SureTrak, but P6 I consider it so unsuitable to my needs that I feel I must warn those people who insist in forcing contractors to use P6 because it is convenient to them without any consideration to the Contractor. Perhaps only by showing these people how their choice pale in comparison to others they will eventually get it.

Just imagine trying to manage a job with multiple shifts and your software be incapable of correctly doing the math. Imagine an Owner insisting on his WBS when your company standard is different, you need software capable of multiple WBS. Imagine a software that limits you to use a single financial periods definition when you have a portfolio of jobs on different countries and different accounting financial periods.

Imagine a software that takes you more than 2 minutes to install and takes more than 30MB disk space, such inefficient software you shall not be forced to use. Imagine software that whenever you want to resource load your activities you cannot call a crew or multi resource with a single click of the mouse. Imagine software you cannot assign your crews to work on partial assignments or work load at the same time within multiple activities, for example sharing an engineer with 3 activities, are you going to dived it in 3; head, butt and feet.

No way, we as a group we must look for options, we as a group must share the differences and we must call it to the attention when any software fall short of other, it is a matter of knowledge, it is a matter of choices. You are all welcomed to challenge us as well at Spider Forum. If your software is incapable of modeling some issue, just ask how we do it.

Sahreef, you are correct about it taking time and effort, true and responsible modeling to manage multimillion dollar jobs is a serious responsibility, learning the little I know took me some time. At least Spider Team did not made any false promises on it being "the easiest to use", they just asked me to give it a serious try.

Regards,

Rafael

Hi Rafael

Your comments make me laugh!!!!

Why do hate P6 so much????

Well of course you have showed a lot of its limitations but I guess the normal crowd is happy with it. Not every one has reached the level of resource levelling (including me; I mean anyone can resource level but to get a reasonable solution requires a lot of experience and effort) ........

After your continuous marketing of Spider and the link you posted to check out the Spider Demo Versin. I have finally Installed it.....

You were very right !!! The installation is very easy....

I like the opening line in the First Project Setion (Help Menu) 

"Spider Project is complex professional software that helps its users to create project models that simulate any real life situations."

One function which you mentioned that has really surprised me was the Workload ....I have not got it fully but I feel its like stretching (relaxing the activity with smaller duration in  ) a Ladder (SS- FF), then there is nothing to challenge spider!!!

Best regards

Shareef A Azeez

Chirag,

You are killing two birds with a single shot.

1. The change on this site interface.
2. And P6 as you are posting your dissapointment on a P6  forum.

I happen to agree with you on both.

Regards,

Rafael