P5 or P6 ?

P6 is essentially the same product as P5, albeit with a much more sophisticated web tool. Indeed, the vast majority of development hours have been spent on the web tool.



It does, however, have a few significant refinements in its main application. Below are three of (in my opinion) the most significant:



1 - P6 has the ability to overide built in cost curves and manually enter bucket forcast figures. This was a major drawback in earlier versions, especially when taking high a high level view of Programmes/Portfolios.



2 - P6 has much improved baseline functionality. Copy and pasting a project in P6 (or XER’ing it) will maintain any associated baseline information. Not so in P5.



There are other differences, but they are two of the most significant.



Regards...

Hi Dieter,



I am not having a go at you but rather for the greater audiances. Also I misread your underline message.



I know P3 is a good system indeed it bring me years of joys and opporturnities, but its time to move on, even it can still do the same old job.



We, human is different from other animal because we can use tools and refining it over the years.



Cheers



Alex

Alex

I meant, that if you have isolated projects with no need for a common reporting, you might use P3. Sorry I expressed misleading. Still P3 is a good system, but it was developed 20 years ago. A car of that age you may use for private purpose; but for business?

If management needs an overall reporting, overall resource planning, it is P3e/P5/P6.

Regards

Dieter

That means if your company is only have one project then they should you P3??



We planner have to look wider, otherwise we will be stuck in our box. Yes you might only running one project at a time but your company will hundreds if not thousand of projects, all different in nature,risk, ROI, time ....



To manage all these, they will need a effective platform. If we do not move on to the entreprise system, we will be slowly phaseout. My advice is learn what the new system offer, and try to understand what it can provide to the company not only yourself.



HTH



Alex

Thanks Dieter

Hi

sorry to jump on the waggon again. We use 6.1. No problem to delete curtains. As far as I remember this issue was solved by a service pack for 6.0, but I’m not sure.

P6 is just a new release of P5 with some web-enhancements.

As for the comparison with P3: In my humble opinion: If you have a single project with your resources only working for you, no needs for overall reporting, it will be convenient to use P3.

Another item: After we changed from P3 to P5 in Jan/07 life became easier - time to create a plan, resource planning, reporting.

Regards

Dieter

I use curtains in P3...I also agree there are probably bugs in P3... and that explains all the later versions...I am more familiar with P3 than P6...



The reason why I was asking is because am at the process of joining a company that uses P6 and was thinking about all the challenges I could face in my new job ie.; new environment, new people, new processes and systems, new planning software to get more familiarised with etc...

It will get fixed in the next SP, there are probably still bugs in P3.



The nature of development companies is to rush software into a’live’ environment and to use the users for testing.



Plus, do you ever use curtains? i never use curtains.

Oliver, do you know anything about the bug in P6 - not being able to delete curtains permanently?



Cheers...

P5 is far superior to P3 in its functionality and scalability.



P6 is only worth using if you have an organization that has high project management maturity and board level buy-in.



But...P5 maintenance is ending at the end of this year so P6 is the best Primavera tool to upgrade to.

(It just costs loads!!)

Mr. Haris



its merely depends upon the nature of the organisation.p6 is mainly an organisation oriented package where the role of a planning engineer is very much restricted.Also the effective usage of p6 depends upon the awarenes of the higher management to this package.for example if your project manager or higher level doesnt know anything abt the software but only interested in the final outcome like schedules .reports etc...then there is no use to upgrade from p3 to p6.Again the in p6 the project management part may be directly handled by the top management from the head office or corporate office and the planning engineer at site supposed to work on the web application of p6 ie ’my primavera’ where you can find lot of restrictions.



regards

vimal

I Agree what Andrew Chan said, P3 programme always benefitial to planner during planning, and to track back where does the critical path fall into so that all activities link to each others. However, 95% Building Contractor Project Manager don’t know what benefit does P3 provide.



Remaining 5% (including my boss) like P3 as planning tool to run construction projects and link most critical relationships to all activities as possible.



I have experienced in P3 for more than 8 years, however, times is required to convert me from p3 -> p5.



In this connection, I can’t find out what new features in P5 is benefit than P3 during planning in construction project.



All brother, please advise before I go into P5.

Thanks a lot

Alex,



A Project Manager do not know what the plan represents because he do not want to study. If you understand what standard of Project management computer skill, you will not dreaming that ’they can access to the latest project plan’. If you understand the education level of a foreman, you will not said that ’they will benefits by myPrimavera P6web’. Do you know how many’senior management- a project manager’ understand and willing to read a P3 construction programme? I am talking about the practical usage of P5 or P6 not theoretical usage. If you smart enough to understand the construction environment, you do not lost track now!



Andrew

Haris



First of all, I believe P5 will be out of maintenance very soon - Sept 08. And P6 6.0 / 6.1 is very different.



As for recommendation, I recommend P6 6.0 for now, simply because its a stable enviornment, it improves a lot in the web interface / import/export / High level resource planning and many other (management & reporting features). (especially if you want to get update from the Engineer remotely the web is a Great Features)



Andrew,



I can see planner is finding very difficult to accpet from P3 to P5 or P6. Simply because planner’s function becomes much more restricted, ways to complete task become different and they don’t get the benefits. Thats why very few planner support to go enterprise. However, management (senior or Project Manager) do sees the benefits. They can now understand what is the plan represents, and they have access to the latest project plan, see and delays do the what-if... and much much more. As for the foreman, they benefits too (if you have the myPrimavera P6web).



And tell you what, this trend will keep on going until the entire program become a web based program. If you smart enough you should consider ride on it b4 you lost track.



Good Luck



Alex

I think P3 is more suitable for 1 project planning. P5 is used as a company managment. It is not much improvement to the project planning but impose more setting constraint to the user. Anyway, I don’t like P5, it seems just a marketing strategy to make a new version for you to upgrade. Is there anyone know whether there is a big improvement from P3 to P5 or P6?

Hi Haris

P6 is the current, P5 the previous release. If you migrate, P6 is the only way (Version 6.1, because there are modifications in the database and the web access plus some functional improvements) The upgrade P6 to 6.1 seems difficult for the server..

On the documentation cd, you’ll find a pdf like: From P3 3.1 to P6 which is an excellent reference manual.

The only reason for a step backwards (P6 --> P5) is license issue for SQL-Server. Many operations with a big database access (assign codes, resources) run much faster. More procedures are processed on the server.

Good luck

Dieter

Hi Haris

P6 is the current version, P5 the previous. P6 is an improvement to P5. So it’s better to install P6.

But if you have partners who use P5 and you’ll have to co-operate, P5 would be an advantage.

Dieter