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IT Governance Using Primavera P6

In today’s vast expansion of industries, the one industry that has changed the trends and is bringing challenges for it’s users daily is IT industry. It’s expansion in the last decade has cause a ravishing challenge for the industries to manage the resources and bring the best to the costumes, users, developers as well as the executive team. With it’s release Primavera P6 has brought solutions to the managing resources in all kinds and sectors, which includes the IT industry. Oracle Primavera P6 is the most powerful tool, which is robust and easy to use which is helping in prioritizing the changing trends globally. It also includes planning, managing and executing the projects at hand.

Project Outsourcing: Pros and Cons

Here’s the question arises, what does it actually delivers to you and what key features will compel you to choose Primavera P6 for your company’s portfolio management. Mainly it handles your programs and portfolios, the best part about it , it’s an integrated portfolio management solution comprising role specific functionality which satisfies each members needs, responsibilities and skills.

There’s no specific size of project when it comes to handling complexity, large scale organizations as well as small business set-ups can use this integrated management system. It provides a single solution, adapt to various size of complexities. It intelligently scales to meet the needs and roles at different levels in an organization. It align strategy , execution and results. It ensures all projects are aligned to enterprise objectives. Manages incoming demands and prioritize work. Improve accountability and decisions through vast visibility and collaboration in an organization. Project management is not an easy task , manage work resources and building trust when it comes to delivery and effectiveness. Specially when it involves workers on different levels , which may result in multiple challenges, Primavera P6 helps you in optimizing value of all resources which may includes human resources, human capital, budgeting, facilities that may increase and maximize ROI (return on investment). Primavera P6 is best when you don’t want to go tracking down the people’s pagers, emails and phones to track down their progress with their work, it helps you manage the real time progress and deal with the latency which may led to decrease in your progress as an organization.

Now coming towards, how it manages IT governance, the first thing  to ponder is to focus on things that really matters and will increase the value of the progressive development of your organization whether it’s a large scale or small scale industry. The increasingly expanding organizations are facing two main problems these days, how to maximize ROI on your business, how to demonstrate greater value to the businesses they serve. Implementing the Primavera P6 by prescient group solutions helps your industry in establishing a relation between IT industry and business industries through enhanced decision making and efficiency improvements.  It gives you a single system of record for comprehensive portfolio management.

The things which will make your work a whole lot easier is business process management, work flow, configuration, cost and time management,resource and demand management, SAP Primavera integration, autovue, business intelligence, universal content management (UCM), user productivity kit (UPK).

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Introduction to Primavera Systems Incorporation

Les Seskin, Dick Faris and Joel Koppelman are those legendary names who founded Primavera Systems, a brand name under which many soft wares that collectively form a comprehensive Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) solution are marketed. Primavera was launched by Primavera System Inc. in 1983 but later on it was acquired by Oracle in 2008.

Primavera software caters the needs of a vast range of dimensions of a business. It includes project management, collaboration and control capabilities and integrates with many other soft wares.

primaveraroundchart

Primavera Systems Incorporation specializes in, product as well as program management software for almost all business areas which include architecture, construction industry, oil and refinery companies, Engineering etc. Primavera software is so well refined and articulately designed that it focuses on measuring performance, assuring governance, controlling in the best possible manner the overall activities of staff of a huge number with primary task of Project Portfolio Management which is its core essence. It helps in team collaboration enhancements and prioritization of investments and resources. A huge number of clients consider procuring this system due to one of its most attractive features which is support to risk management.

Primavera Systems Inc. has been continuously working on improvement of its effectiveness to help organizations increase their productivity in terms of ROI. The latest version of Primavera software is P6 with resumed improvement from Inspire, Evolve, Suretrak, Pertmaster, Cost manager, Contract Manager and Prosight. P6, which is the newest addition to the suite of Project Management Solutions, provides real-time view of portfolio performance. Risk management or what-if scenarios come under full fledge separate Primavera packages and offer scorecards and capacity analysis.

Such huge systems always require some special treatments as they produce the maximum fruit also. Their hardware requirements vary greatly depending on a client’s needs but in general, their hardware specifications apply to all software packages. Besides, client operating system must be Windows XP professional, Windows vista business addition or Citrix.

After all the pre-requisites have been dealt with, choose the right projects for the greatest business value. Then effectively plan, organize, manage, control and appraise your projects of all sizes. But the fact must be admitted and acknowledged that projects are becoming continuously unpredictable and more complex due to new emerging challenges, scarce resources, economic uncertainty, fluctuating markets, changing business demands, employees’ demanding more around-the-clock collaboration. In such situations, even medium level enterprises change in their plans and try to execute the right projects, easily and affordably.

Primavera is key to effectively address all above challenges that an organization faces in daily operations. Oracle’s enterprise primavera project portfolio management solutions enable organizations to intelligently manage their programs and projects. Real time visibility and practical information can be had using Primavera solutions. An organization can determine whether enough or sufficient resources are available or appropriate skilled personnel or team members are there to accomplish the tasks. Primavera solution helps a project manager evaluate the risks and rewards associated with projects and programs. You can achieve optimal performance in respect of management, collaboration, and control capabilities that is needed to effectively execute a project from start to end.

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Evolution to Primavera Project Portfolio Management

Just a decade ago, profuseness in existence of automatic systems, Enterprise Management Solutions, ERPs was rare and could not be envisioned. Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Management Information Systems, Financial Management Systems were not considered to be worth investing huge amounts in, like millions of dollars as their value for money was not acknowledged and man was too less refined intellectually, technically and information technologically and to concepts like artificial intelligence in respect of Enterprise systems. But a boom was witnessed back in 2001 of newer and newer computer languages which were being invented and their process of becoming quickly obsolete.  Every passing day was bringing revolutionary changes in the way gigantic enterprises operated in global village scenario compared with outdated practices. IT revolution had trailed French revolution.

portfolio_management_evaluation

Now heaps and piles of work get done in hours that dozens of employees on huge pay scales used to do in months. But it has only changed the way an organization operates. For man-power or human resource too, IT revolutions and automations by soft wares have entirely only changed the directions of mindsets, operational procedures and careers.

I, despite being a chartered accountant, found out within 3 years of professional career after I graduated from college that there was no survival for any company operating globally without profound knowledge and command over ERP systems implemented in-house and being insightful of their nature. It was 2006 when I, being the biggest proponent of Project Portfolio Management, proposed its procurement and implementation. On behalf of my company, I started my hunt for different soft wares trainings and IT certifications but to my surprise, I could find none in the near vicinity of mine. This was an era when only a handful of business tycoons of the world acknowledged its significance and there existed extreme monopoly in this emerging industry.

Presently, after about more than 10 long years, it is now that services are being rendered on vast scale in all walks of IT everywhere. But still quality, commitment, cost effectiveness and dedication are intrinsic part of only a few among them. Prescient Solutions Group Inc. keeps and maintains the honor to be one of those. Prescient Solutions Group is considered to be one of the best soft ware solution company and specializes in niche of Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM). It has got everything to offer that project manager might ever need or a multinational or transnational enterprise must be equipped with. A couple of years ago, our company started its operations after successful implementation of EPPM from Prescient Solutions Group Inc. In true sense, the company can now signify project management tools how inevitable they are in this era. Extensive market research of several numbers of companies led us to Prescient Solutions Group. Catering so well the major industries of the world, Prescient Solutions Group Inc. has created a real difference in Project Portfolio Management. Allocating budgets for PPM will never be an investment rather it will be saving for any company in longer run.

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Introduction to Baselines of Primvera P6

Introduction to Baselines of Primavera P6

The Primavera P6 provides the option to assign a maximum of three user baselines. Each baseline is provided to each project. Let us have a look at their role in successfully tracking overall project status.

Sched Sample 1

Baseline for Current Project

This baseline shows the current activities in project schedule that can be viewed in editable view.

Baseline for Project

This baseline resembles the current project baseline and is only created once all stakeholders have agreed upon final baseline. This baseline is usually not changed unless the due process has been completed and is normally kept under version control.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary User Baselines

These baselines are usually used to help get quick snapshots for comparison reporting and near term variances.

Basics of Baseline

The baseline is created using Maintain Baselines dialog, this will generate a full copy of the project within the database. You will not see the baseline project in project list as it is labeled as baseline copy.

There is no limit on the number of baselines that can be created within Primavera Project P6. However, this should not mean that you get carried away by the notion. The creation of each additional baseline means a full project copy, which would increase the amount of space occupied in the database. The performance of P6 database will eventually get affected because of the creation of too many baselines.

User Baselines

User baselines serve a different purpose which is mainly to assist the scheduling manager handle variance for a shorter period of time. One other way of looking at user baselines is that they provide snapshots of monthly status updates. Multiple user baseline fields can be used to create variance reports which would help the management spot differences between current and previous periods.

If the baseline is set as primary, the BL1 columns of the table area will have dates before the project which have been created in the Assign Baseline dialog. On the other hand, the data shown by BL2 and BL 3 will show data from baselines where snapshots have been allocated for Secondary and Tertiary fields.

The same BL prefixes are used by the variance columns which have been assigned to them in Assign Baseline dialog. One other use of different types of baselines is to display Gantt chart via Bars dialog. Select the display options to show baselines as bars below the activity bar. Bar Style settings in lower tabs can be used to modify their appearance.

Conclusion:

The capabilities of Primavera P6 are very powerful and useful and you can further capitalize on user baselines to better manage projects.

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An introduction to High Level Resourcing?

The tool for project management Primavera P6 helps in planning, scheduling and management of resources at hand. The amount of details that P6 can handle is enormous. You can use Primavera P6 to track work for thousands of hours. One of the key strengths exhibited by Primavera is its capability to create high level resource allocations. High level resource means planning to fulfill resource requirements of a high level project plan.

primavera p6 scheduling

High Level Project Plan

The high level project plan is usually of level 1 or level 2. In this kind of plan, the work details involved are usually basic. Anyone who sees the layout of the plan can identify core or critical elements or parts like construction details, design, engineering or procurement. The levels can go to many sub-levels depending on the amount of detail involved. Some engineering associations range levels from 0 to 5, where 0 signifies single bar and on the other extreme 5 being high level of detailed involved in a task. In case of level 5 tasks, work is categorized into several sub-categories. However, level 5 is not the last level and there many subsequent sub levels involved.

Why high level project plan needs to be resource loaded?

The primary reason why high level project plans may be resource loaded is because it will allow you to accurately assess overall resource allocations required. There are many other factors which get covered using this approach including possible downtimes, need of resources at various project phases and efficient use of available manpower any particular time. Besides, you will be able to predetermine cost and cash flow estimates.

Resourcing High-Level Project Plan in Primavera P6

Primavera P6 provides very simple way of performing high level resourcing, typically when we are beginning from the level 0 or level 1. One of the major benefits of using P6 is that you will be able to save a lot of time and be able to efficiently manage data without getting lost. The best way to create high level resources is to do in groups of trade or occupation instead of individuals. For example, “Site Engineer Construction” assigning “Construction Engineering Team” as high level resource would ensure availability of this team to other parts of the project as well.

The Relation between High Level Resourcing and Levels of Effort Activities

Levels of effort activities can play a very important role in high level resourcing. You can summarize activities using level of effort activity for single resource instead of assigning it several times to multiple activities. Although, we know level of effort activities represent the tasks which indirectly support the overall project but still these can be utilized for equipment or crew in high level plans.

Conclusion

The High level planning and high level resourcing come together to give project managers a fair idea of budget needs and human resource requirements to accomplish various activities. You can easily create a schedule at high level within minutes. Tools like Resource Usage Profile Graph and Activity Usage Profile Graph give estimates for resource demand chart and projected cost curve.

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Important Things To Know About Primavera P6 Calendars

The calendars have become central to the entire scheduling. If you do not have at least one calendar created, you cannot create a schedule in Primavera P6. Here is a quick overview of the calendar features which you need to learn in order to effectively use it to your advantage.

primavera p6 calendar

Calendar for Activities

In the new calendar for Primavera P6, calendars are associated with activities. This allows you to add more flexibility to your scheduling and use multiple calendars for one project. For example, if two works are going on simultaneously at different places, one’s schedule will not affect the other’s work. You can use several calendars on more complex projects involving a lot of occupations to avoid confusion or clutter. However, you can still use one calendar for the entire project if this is what seems to be a more feasible option.

Activity Calendars and Resource Calendars

There are two ways in which you can create calendars in Primavera P6, activity and resource based. The most prevalently used calendars are activity based. For example, you need to perform maintenance of a machine every second Wednesday. In order to put that activity on map, a resource calendar can be created for that machine with the maintenance cycle scheduled into it. All other work related to that machine can now be scheduled around it, wherever the dependencies exist. In order for other related activities to become dependencies, you need to create “Resource Dependent” activity type.

Time Levels

There are three ways in which you can set time levels including; hours of the day, days of the week, and days of month / year. When setting up the rules, work can be scheduled at any of these three time levels. Here are few examples to help you know how you can set time levels.

  • Select days of the month or year that are workable or non-workable, it may include local holidays.
  • Select days of the week which are workable, like setting two days off as discussed above.
  • You can also select office timings, the beginning and ending hours for work.

Calendars and P6 Scheduler

There are different time zones and working days in various parts of the world. For example, in UAE the typically working week starts on Sunday and ends on Thursday, with Friday and Saturday off. These types of exceptional situations may arise when a project has unusual time zones to deal with. Create a calendar with Friday and Saturday off, Primavera P6 will never allow scheduling of any activity on these two days. All the work and non-work rules can be set in a calendar.

Changing Activities

Changing of activities in Primavera P6 can be tricky. Mostly, a new calendar needs to be assigned to an activity. Be careful when you assign a new calendar because the newly allocated time might add up to increase total duration required to complete the work. The adding up of time usually happens when the time levels are set in hours per day.

Primavera P6 calendars are a lot more comprehensive, although you need to learn them in order to work for you and not against you.

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Common Project Control Mistakes Committed By Companies

Among many other reasons which unnecessarily increase costs and decrease efficiency of any project, one important reason is how management uses the tools, supervision, and planning to maximize productivity. However, this is an ideal situation where everything is in its proper place and there are no constraints that the management has to face. Projects control play a critical role in deciding level of productivity actually achieved.

common project control mistakes

A simple way to avoid this pitfall is to set projects control group and not the projects monitoring group which would help a company closely monitor data trends, oversee performance KPIs, and analyze work accomplished after each shift. Here are some of the most common project controls mistakes companies commit.

  1. They do not rely on any turnaround management process or formal project which would help them determine before time that milestones set at particular dates will be achieved. A project gated process or milestone schedule has to be in place to remain on course.
  2. They fail to establish effective project controls which would dynamically schedule planned activities on regular intervals like daily or on shifty-by-shift basis.
  3. There is no proper field supervision for execution of projects. These companies should consider independent field execution supervision. No matter how much resources go into planning, scheduling and coordination if all that has been chalked out cannot be acted upon. Every function needs to be designated to its relevant resource. A team made of individuals who are specialized in their own fields would produce a much better result in comparison to another team where the specialized jobs do not have designated individuals assigned.
  4. Companies may also lack in establishing formal processes which would help them proactively identify work that needs procurement or contracting.
  5. Some organizations overstretch themselves by aiming too high or setting unrealistic targets for quality of work, performance, cost allocations, and schedule durations. They should keep their primary focus on costs, quality of work accomplished, and safety of workers, everything else will eventually fall in its due place.
  6. The preliminary budget set by the companies is not correct and it fails to accurately determine scope of work. Some of the indicators which would be used in correctly estimating preliminary budgets include direct wrench hours and indirect resource estimates. One way of eliminating this problem is to use different tools to reach the cost estimations.
  7. Cost and benefit analysis tools can be very handy in determine the overall risks associated with a project. Asset management teams should rely on comprehensive tools like Primavera P6 to exactly determine scope of the project.
  8. Hierarchy of management plays a critical part in successful completion of a project. The hierarchy various from one industry to another but the key idea is to bring structure to the team. This hierarchy will help in all phases of the project including planning, budgeting, resource allocation, execution, cost controls, and quality assurance.

Management should avoid these common project control mistakes to ensure all projects are completed on time, within available budgets and without putting the workforce in harm’s way.

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An Introduction to Level of Effort Activity in Primera P6

Level of Effort Activity means a special type of activity which has its own unique characteristics in terms of duration. Primavera P6 uses predecessors and successors to calculate duration of the level of activity.

integration

What Constitutes Level of Effort Activities?

Level of Effort activities is mainly created to support the main project. The work done using this type of activity only help in completion of the project but it has nothing to do with the deliverables. However, it is important because it acts as a catalyst in completion of a project. The tasks performed under this type of activities are still critical to successful project completion. Some typical examples of Level of Effort activities may include clerical or admin work, project management tasks, meetings with clients, and equipment maintenance. Activities of these kinds do not directly impact the revenue which would be earned from the project which is why it is very difficult to assign values to them in numbers.

Level of Effort Meaning

The term has been coined to mean spreading of work. The level of activity is not crucial to work flow and should not appear on Critical Path.

Use of Level of Effort Activities in Primavera P6

The purpose of creating a Level of Effort Activities in Primavera P6 is to track time spent by allocated resources on supporting tasks. The predecessors and successors are used to get dates and durations of level of effort activities performed. In order to automatically calculate these durations and dates, you need to assign FF relationship to successor and SS relationship to predecessor.

The Calculation

The calculation is done by taking Level of Effort activities date from early start date and the finish date comes automatically from the successor. The Primavera P6 calendar is used to make the date and duration calculations. In order to finalize the calculation you will need to reschedule your project. The change in duration of any of the Level of Effort activities will automatically be readjusted.

How to show Level of Effort activities?

In order to show Level of Effort activities you need to make adjustments to Gantt Bar settings. Go to Gantt Bar, right click to select Bars. Make sure the entry named “Remaining Level of Effort” is checked. If there is no such entry made, make an entry using the add button. The “Level of Effort” activities form integral part of complete project schedules as they help display all supportive tasks. Get yourself familiar with them but make sure not to overdo it.

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Scheduling Best Practices To Keep Project On Track

Project schedules form an important part of planning. However, some common mistakes repeated by the schedulers often mess up the entire planning process. This article aims to look at most frequently committed scheduling mistakes which need to be avoided to remain on track for projects progress. Let us review each one by one and what it means for schedulers.

Sched Sample 1

Defining of Logics

The most common scheduling problem is leaving logic activities open ended. The activity with open ended logic does not have any successor attached to it, suspending without anywhere further to go down. There can be some scenarios in real world where this is pretty much possible that an activity does not have any sub-activities or successors related to it. However, avoid this kind of open ended logics for activities. If you fail to complete the flow, the activity falls out of critical path. If you must leave activity logic without any successors attached to it, add a constraint date.

Cautious Use of Activity Constraints

The use of constraints needs to be carefully exercised as these not usually necessarily mentioned at start or finish dates all the time. A constraint usually establishes a relationship between two activities. In this case one cannot be completed without the other. Or it can also be related to some particular deadline for a certain type of activity which needs to be completed before a specified date. A lot of guidelines for scheduling recommended sparse use of activity constraints for project scheduling.

Hard constraints are usually introduced when the open ended logic activity represents a major project milestone. In that case, hard lines can be added to lock down starting and ending dates. This practice will provide greater clarity. A milestone can be added to this open or suspended activity and the constraint is accordingly applied. The guidelines which do not encourage using constraints advocate following a safer path as not following them may create confusion between constrained activities and critical path. The true critical path can easily get overcrowded with too many constraints. Therefore, constraints only need to be used when you must have to use them. Rely on constraints like start date, end date or before or after type.

Activity Duration Dilemma

Activities without creating any deliverables cannot be usually defined in certain lengths. However, works which are measurable need to be described clearly in terms of duration required for completion. Usually, the activities duration must not exceed three months as a general guideline. An activity exceeding this period normally represents more than just an activity, an integral component of the overall project summary. In that case, this can be further divided into smaller parts to avoid confusion and be able to identify smaller tasks that need to be accomplished to complete the overall task.

Conclusion

The guidelines only provide you with industry best practices. These guidelines can be customized to match a particular situation and are not hard and fast rules which you have to abide by at all costs. Schedulers, who need to accommodate day to day contingency situations must carefully set guidelines.

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A Guide to Creating Effective Primavera P6 Schedule

Scheduling forms an integral part of project management. There can be hundreds or few thousand of activities which need to be scheduled. The scheduling without any predecessor or successor relationships can create multiple problems for the project manager. The interconnectedness decides the order in which all tasks can be executed to achieve desired results. Lack of relationships means no network which would have no critical paths to follow. Here is a look at some simple tips to avoid this dilemma.
Primavera P6 Schedule

Set Milestones
Milestones set you apart by standing out for anyone who is going through the layout. Make sure that all milestones are put under one Work Breakdown Structure element on top right of the project. All you need to do is to add one Work Breakdown structure which can be named Important Milestones. Now cut and paste every milestone set in the project under this WBS element to make things easier to manage.

Naming Cost Heads

The allocation of costs is a very important part not only for the accounting team but also for the management to understand flow of budget. Generic names for resources can only create confusion. The best way to name cost heads is to make them relatable. For example, cash paid or interest accrued is too general a name given to a cost head. On contrary, if you name it something on the lines of travel or daily wages paid, it will make things crystal clear for every stakeholder involved.

When to Be Vague?

Some of the projects started are very large and nothing can be said about their scope with certainty. This is the case where naming conventions should convey that sense of broader aspects of matters to accommodate the changes which would occur at later stages of the project. The use abbreviations should be intelligent yet balanced. If you choose too many abbreviations, it would make it different for the management to interpret various activities named. On the other hand, too few or generic names can also generalize or oversimplify matters.

Calendar Use

The use of calendars cannot be over emphasized. The best way to remain on schedule in Primavera P6 is to make use of as many calendars as possible. There are many benefits of using multiple calendars. The first major advantage is that different activities can have separated into sub-schedules or perhaps there may be different teams working on various parts of the project. Similarly, in some projects, each phase is not rigidly tied to another milestone or dependency in completion which means separate calendars of activities can be maintained.

Incrementing and Managing Activities

The default incrementing in Primavera P6 is done by 10. However, it is highly recommended that you increment activities by 1 instead. The creation of 1 increment helps you create a simple to understand numbering convention which would ensure no other activities are added at later stages to jumble things up. Unlike the older version, you will not have to renumber all activities should you feel the need to add one activity in between as Primavera P6 automatically increments the rest of the activities. And do not force yourself to set dates for every activity. Half of the activities should have constraints so you are able to understand flow of logic in dependencies without getting overburdened with too much data to understand.

 

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A Guide to Creating Effective Primavera P6 Schedule

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