Dear All,

That was really benefited discussion,I suggest if any one can forward the same to the Primavera company so as to make the required modifications to P6.

Regards,

Funny how after so much time after the post and the issuing of P6 this subject still being ducussed and commented.

It clearly indicates Primavera has completely delivered a tool not suitable for most of the planners work. The same way it also indicates that the new tool (P6 - now in rev. 8.2 already) is directed to a different target (company wise, managers, etc).

Contributing to the actual status we can find:

1.P6 not incorporating (even today) tools for planner every day work - which existed in P3.1

2.Difficult for the most busy planners to find the necessary time to know P6 in deep.

3.The fact that P6 makes simple things requried for planners routine work impossible to get while it incorporates nice complex stuff for which normaly you and your company (in the context of the conpany reality and project) do not care.

 

Summarizing: I still use P3 if I have the choice (I do not realy like to have to export data to excel just to see a S curve of a certain area, phase, system or lead engineer, among other common day work activities.

 

I use however P6 when interacting with other companies and planners hoping Primavera one of these days will incorporate in one release all the nice functions left in P3... (decreasing the focus on comercial and make the target on what is requried for the planners).

 

BR

 

JMFrade

I have to agreed to most of the comments here. This is the problems when programmer trying to be a planner. They just didn't understand the needs of planner or most of time overkill the programme.

This goes to P6 as well. Too complex and too many unrelated columns/calculations and in the end, most of current planner will just do all the updating/s-curve etc in Excel.

Rgds

P3 has powerful and smart keyboard shortcuts, P6 has none of them. While managing a schedule model consists of thousands of activity, trying to make mouse more useful is a bullshit. I want P3's keyboard shortcuts back in further P6 versions.

I am a planning engineer since 2003 using primavera for the whole period, limited usage of P6 (only 1.5 year), I found that P6 is easier in some features but as an overall I found P3 is easier specially in report preparation and outputs, may be I didn't reach a good level in P6 or didn't have the chance to  practice more. also in th company I used to work for we were not able to use P6 as central system managing programs and portfolios, and it came up finally that individuals were using at as stand alone system which empty the essence of P6 has and P3 doesn't.

not to forget that planner needs to spend more time and get more knowledge in IT issues (SQL and infomaker).

Hi Joel

 

" If you discuss planning terminology with project managers they don’t even know what you are talking about"

Good one!!!

I have been planning for 23 years and I find p6 plain awful to use too many awkward and labour intensive steps to to anything, calendar issues and an annying habit of loosing layouts .. I could go on. P3 is now so old will not work with my windows 7 64 bit system so im stuck with this piece of crap. Asta Powerproject is the way to go

P6 is rich as far as content is concerned, but there are very limited keyboard shortcuts in P6 compared to P3. So, Y this feature is removed, if it’s a improved version???

P3 and P6 serve different purposes. P3 is more for scheduling. P6 is more for project or program management. I’m using both and I find myself reverting to P3 to build schedules and using P6 for project integration and such.

As such P6 is okay. It process information well. It also has some great capabilities. But it also has its problems.

Its input interface is fiddly and the output graphics are appalling. It takes too much time to create and build a schedule, and for presentable graphics, even just basic bar charts, 3rd party software has got to be used or do as I have, export out to P3 and print from there (and P3’s graphics aren’t anything to write home about.)

It’s labor intensive. P6 needs an army of planners/schedulers and IT people to maintain it. If you\re using a standalone version like me, good luck, because you’ll spend a lot of time on IT-type work instead of planning/scheduling. (One Primavera support tech expressed surprise then dismay that I didn’t have an IT department to help with the administration/SQL aspects of P6.)

It has limited applicability. Project’s I’ve worked on and others I’ve spoken to don’t have the need, time or resources to invest in using all of P6’s capabilities. What they want, and generally quickly, are schedules to help them manage and graphics to help them report, neither of which P6 does well.

P6 is designed so that it best used with direct interface by others outside the planning/scheduling department. The companies or projects I’ve worked on the only interest is in the output … the input is planning/scheduling’s problem. I can’t imagine what it’d take getting a company or project to agree to a direct interface.

Also, and a surprise to me, is how P6 is perceived. A couple of overseas (outside America) contractors saw P6 as an American-style project management product so that using P6 meant using American-style project management to which they took exception. It’s kind of hard to promote the use a product that’s almost seen as a kind of propaganda.

P6 seems to be Primavera’s attempt at a project management software solution, meaning that P6 is better suited to the corporate level where there’s the time and resources to tinker. Fortunately P3 (because of user demand that Primavera not drop it and the prospect that Microsoft Project would take over), a more limited but more widely useable software, remains available.

Ray,
I never really play tennis, it was just a way of decribing that the skill of the workman is more important than the shinyness of the tool.

I believe a level of effort task is an ’improved’ hammock.

The software constantly changes, as does the lexicon and best practice methodologies of project management.

Maybe at one time the BS was more prominent as THE standard to use, but now PMI, APM, PRINCE etc seem to be used more extensively.But lets face it, they are all much of a muchness.

Saying that there are some subtle difference between a ’hammock’ (P3) and a LofE (P3e+). I think that these include the type of calendar used for scheduling the activity and the types of logic that can be used in conjunction with the activity.