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How Project Management Training is Important?

Training is a very essential tool in any kind of resourceful work. If you do not train your employees in right way; there are more chances of work go wrong and can cause downfall to your organization. The presumed goal of training software project managers is to equip them with the knowledge and competencies that will help them to be successful in different domains regarding the domain of Software project management.

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These will not guarantee success but make success more likely. Over the years, the notion of success has expanded greatly from simply meeting requirements, delivering on time and not exceeding the budget to include a plethora of other success criteria. In fact, what success is; often changes many times during the project. This and many other facets of software project management frustrate and perplex untrained software project managers since most enter into this role untrained.

This article presents what anecdotal and experimental evidence has shown software project managers need to know that can be conveyed via training programs. Today’s software project manager can also benefit from this information to overcome many of the misperceptions about nearly everything regarding software project management.

The need of the hour is managing adequate issues of software engineering projects that cannot be done without the use of software project management. The importance of adequate management is becoming more apparent with each passing day. Usually in organizations the project managers are not trained at all or are poorly trained. This article examines what we now know is needed to successfully manage software engineering projects and how education can help transfer this information.

Software project management represents a paradox within the software engineering community.

It has been described as being more vital to software project success than all other factors combined, yet there are still no conferences or journals devoted to this topic. In fact, international conferences on software engineering rarely list software project management as a topic in the call for papers topic list. Finally, we are slowly realizing what other knowledge work related professions have known for a long time – project managers are not born, they are made – through education. The problem is that there is no general agreement on what knowledge and skills a software project manager needs in order to be successful. In fact, we have yet to agree on just what success in software engineering is. This article examines what software engineering project managers need to know, what skills they must possess and how these may be acquired through education. The resources cited are not restricted to software engineering alone as there is a lack of research in this subject.

Before we move to the training part we need to know what software project managers actually do. The tasks they carry out are.

According to a very successful and renowned CEO Robert Townsend, the most skillful and capable person in a team should be made a manager. Because of his caliber of carrying out the underlying tasks and managing what needs to be done when.

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Primavera Real Estate Management World-Class Real Estate Management

Primavera Real Estate Management provides comprehensive tools for planning, tracking, and managing your real estate portfolio. Make strategic decisions effectively and accurately for leased and owned properties. Rules and compliance requirements are kept up to date for easy lease management. Primavera Real Estate Management is part of the integrated Primavera Unifier offering.

Overview of primavera real estate management-a world class approach:

  • Comprehensive management and tracking of leased and owned properties across an entire real estate portfolio
  • Support for landlord and tenant lease types to allow tracking of expenses and income separately
  • Automated tracking of costs and expenses by department, space, or payees
  • Create and track lease payments automatically and roll up information to each facility’s cost worksheet or across your real estate portfolio
  • Manage critical dates and allow Unifier to notify you of upcoming lease dates that require your attention
  • Utilize flexible workflows to route, review, and approve common real estate transactions such as site selection and acquisition, dispositions, new lease initiation, subleasing, lease termination, and more

Features and benefits include:

  • Lease management
    • Flexible, configurable lease management capabilities to support tenant and landlord lease types
    • Automate payment requests and tracking of costs and expenses, associate lease payments with designated cost codes, and roll up to the facility’s cost worksheet
    • Track lease payment terms, contacts, key dates, clauses, tenant improvement allowances, security deposits, and more
    • Straight line rent calculation
    • Automate notifications and alerts for critical dates
    • Ability to support rent roll reports for a single property or across the portfolio

·         Document management

    • Leverage a robust audit trail of document changes to reduce tension across team members
    • The system ensures that all members of your team are always working on the most current document versions

·         Portfolio management

    • Set up and manage portfolio by region, property, site, or any other structure that suites your business organizational hierarchy
    • Full visibility into all real estate information across the entire portfolio with drill-down capabilities
    • Real-time portfolio data through visual dashboards help track performance against business objectives
    • Single, integrated, real estate and facility lifecycle management solution lets you view, compare, and report information for a single property or across your entire real estate portfolio—all in real time

·         Transaction management

    • Initiate and track strategic transactions, such as site/property acquisitions, dispositions, lease initiations and renewals, subleasing, terminations, and more
    • Automate management of scope, tasks, and deadlines through Primavera Unifier’s business process workflows
    • Complex transactions can be configured to handle scope, schedules, costs, documents, and related due diligence processes
    • Ability to configure the solution for tracking other real estate transactions, such as commission tracking processes and reporting

Conclusive discussion:

Use portfolio property KPI’S and dash boards for quality management

Set up and manage complex lease agreements for both tenant and land lord

Track property taxes and other fixed costs

Consolidate all costs and payments for lease and property

View portfolio profile and metrics by portfolio heirarchy

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Cost controls redefined:

Manage all types of projects with detailed cost control using separate cost control processes to track every dimension of project financials. View graphical cash flows. The Cost Sheet Dashboard provides rolled-up information from all project financials with drill-down into details. View and manage multi-year forecasts at the CSI division level or any other multi-level cost structure. Manage all contracts and change orders in detail. Ensure payment integrity. Leverage Transaction Visual Analysis to see all related cost transactions at a glance. Manage Project Schedule and Resources effectively and efficiently.

Advanced project cost management in primavera P6

 

Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management is the most powerful, robust and easy-to-use solution for globally prioritizing, planning, managing and executing projects, programs and portfolios. Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management is an integrated project portfolio management (PPM) solution comprising role-specific functionality to satisfy each team member’s needs, responsibilities and skills. It provides a single solution for managing projects of any size and adapts to various levels of complexity within a project. In addition, it intelligently scales to meet the needs of various roles, functions or skill levels in an organization and on a project team. This course builds on the student’s current knowledge, skills and application of project cost management using Primavera P6.

 

Learning Outcomes

Ability to implement global change – modify projects using advanced functionality.

Manage project cost effectively

Apply advanced scheduling techniques.

Implement earned value analysis.

Use top-down budgeting.

Assign codes.

Benefits

Assist project managers, cost control managers and cot controllers to use Primavera for integrate the cost with project schedule.

Apply the cost control techniques using Primavera including EVM.

Calculate percent complete. Importing and exporting project data.

Understand effective top-down/bottoms-up budgeting calculations.

Topics

Import and export data.

Update baselines.

Use Claim Digger.

Apply duration types.

Calculate percent complete.

Use earned value analysis.

Use top-down budgeting.

Apply tracking layouts.

Auto compute layouts.

Use top-down estimating.

View reflection projects.

Manage issues and risks.

Create a project with Project Architect.

Assign codes.

Use global change.

Advanced scheduling.

 

Prerequisites

Participants should be working in a project management environment and understand how projects are planned and controlled, including knowledge of the following subjects:

P102 Project Management in Primavera using P6 V8.3.

Project management processes.

Experience in the use of PCs and an understanding of the operating system.

Audience

This course is targeted at those who are seeking to develop their skills and knowledge in project budget and cost management.

Project manager (generic)

Project manager (industry specific)

Cost Control Managers

Project planners and schedulers

Project control managers

Project control engineers

Project team members

Project team leaders

Cost Control Engineers

Project coordinators

Planning and scheduling engineers

Quantity surveyors

Format

  • Face-to-face delivery of theory.
  • Facilitated discussions.
  • Facilitator demonstrates the functions of the software using different mediums, such as PowerPoint slides, live software module-by-module view on screen.
  • Individual activities.
  • Structured Workshops

Our program design and delivery is based on adult learning principles and experiential learning techniques:

  • Individual and group activities
  • Short lecture sessions
  • Using templates
  • Practical and experiential
  • Written activities
  • Presentations
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IPM Global Signs Prescient Solutions Group As It’s Newest Channel Partner In North America

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IPM global has currently signed PSGINC as their newest partner in the region of North America. On 6th February 2013. IPM global is very pleased to announce the signing of prescient solutions Group Company, as it’s newest channel partner in the region of North America. The new signing allows PSG to provide AEC firms in the United States with the access to and support for IPM Global’s project management software. In this regard the principal controlling post bearer Lance Drossman at IPM said: IPM has been at the forefront of developing technology targeted at the needs of professionals related to construction for years. Nowadays project managers, owners; stakeholders of the project are mainly tasked with managing the ever-changing needs of capital projects. PSGINC is delighted as well as excited about our relationship with IPM and the new journey we are about to start with a hope that it would prove to be great success and an example of a success story for the years to come. We also feel the product offers easy to use functionality that will give assistance our customers project management, collaboration and document management needs through IPM’S intuitive and very familiar software interface embedded in Microsoft outlook for windows. In this era, the need for technology and the rapidly changing environment. More then ever, projects have become increasingly and rapidly more complex, continually straining and placing burden on an organization’s time and resources. As a partner and reseller for leading and innovative technology. The companies like IPM, oracle, citizen, IBM and INMAGE, is able to meet our client’s most important and prestigious needs and requirements. Which specialise in project management, application consulting systems integration, application development and the support for infrastructure.

The basic purpose of this project management system is to ensure the provision of needs to the project managers and fulfilling their needs and requirements, with the project managers, the construction staff as well, the main purpose is to operate how they already think. The main key features are as follows:

1. Centralised project visibility

2. High adoption rate due to the extension of Microsoft outlook

3. Customisable and flexible, which can meet the customer’s

4. Seamless integration to back end financials.

PSGINC is a next generation project management software suite that provides scalable solution with all the functionality needed to meet the requirements of today’s busy project managers.

Presented through Microsoft outlook and seamlessly integrating mail and calendar services with day-to-day delivery of services and operations. IPM by joining hands with PSGINC in the region of North America puts project management squarely where project staff spends more off their time for beneficial outputs.

The most important thing we learned about this was, IPM global supports integration with outlook; it gives us a way to track email and store them in the project management system. Microsoft outlook has been used for most of the communications purposes these days and the emails are now automatically tracked.  “Nothing has to be done, everything is automatically done.”

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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.

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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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An Introduction to Level of Effort Activity in Primera P6

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