Trevor

I was not trolling (although thanks for the accusation) if I was doing that I would have asked for opinions.

That said, having spent some of yesterday googling the subject, it does seem that when opinions are sought on the subject (especially P* v MSP) a fight usually ensues, mostly because MSP practitioners feel that P* practitioners dismiss their software as some sort of toy (which P* practitioners by and large, do) and very few paople seem to have extensive experience of both.

What I was after (and what I recall from a year or so back that someone was putting together on PP) was a list of objective comparisons along the lines of;

Max number of activities
Max number of links
Coding limits
Simultaneous user limits
WBS structure
Import/export capabilities and limits
Resouces. limit on numbers, depth of coding, possibility to integrate with SAP
etc

with this, I could allow my colleague to match up his requirements and make a decision. In his case, although the accountants will always look for ways to save money, it is really a false economy. The refinery gets one TA every 5 years and this costs anything from 50-100M euros (excl lost opportunity). This money is spent over 5 years but executed on site with about 200-400k MH over a period of about 2 months. The plan is likely to consist of one activity per manshift (so 20k - 40k), will be scheduled to the hour and updated twice daily, at least that’s our situation. Spending 50 Euros or 20,000 euros on software will not affect that outcome on a budget level, only the performance (and utilisation) of the software will. It’s not something really where you start with one package then switch if hat turns out to be insufficient.

As for user competence, most schedulers in my end of the industry are self employed; put your requirements to a series of agents and wait for the CVs to come in. That said, the market has many more high level P3.1 practitioners than MSP or P6 ones from what I see, probably because of how long P3.1 and its predecessors have been about.

One of the things that yesterday’s googling has brought home is that, with most modern packages, there are no longer meaningful limits on coding, resources, activity numbers etc. I also found a NASA white paper (although I’ll have to go back and find the link now) which compared MSP favorably with Open Plan, P3e, SAP back in 2002. In the end (and I’ve only skimmed the highlights so far) they conclude that P3e pips MSP to the post but my pro Pv prejdice was surprised to see that they held MSP in very high regard indeed.

Now, I accept that different industries have different requirements, but this is why I sought an objective list of capabilities and limits rather than an opinion piece. On that subject, Vladimir, I agree that the posted comparison was very Pv fanboi in its leanings, but then the spider project presentation I saw on your site, which claimed no analogous examples with other software on subjects like coding and levelling was equally skewed if you don’t mind me saying so ;-)

so I come up with no clear answer for my colleague it seems that MSP has come on a long way and can manage much larger and more complex schedules than it could have many years ago. Perhaps the accountants are right afterall....

Vladimir, thanks for the reply

indeed we use P3.1 where I am.

about the accountants, I meant that they support MSP because they already have the licenses so need not pay for anything new. It has nothing to do with understanding he capabilities and constraints of MSP v another package, thus my colleague needs to justify his proposal (and indeed make his mind up what to propose). Plus it would be an interesting comparison to have as I am constantly badgered by "what’s wrong with MSP" and frankly I can’t answer them as I don’t use it.

/edit; dieter, we crossed posts I think :-) Ta for the reply, Talking to existing clients (or indeed users) is the reason for this post. I’d sooner hear from planners than developers (no offence to vladimir). I just recall about a year ago that someone here was compiling a list and wondered if it ever got completed. If you know of a study (you mention one by a german university) then it would be great to have a link to it.