.

I would like to share some of my experiences with you chaps, having a back ground in planning for engineering, IT, systems integration (Oracle, SAP) & business change projects mainly with P3, have worked as an Oracle developer/DBA and also having worked on several P3e Implementation projects. Note i use the term implementation projects, there are some keys issues that companies should consider when "MIGRATING" to P3e.

P3e is not a piece of software with which you simply place a CD into your cd rom drive and bingo you have an instant business solution, like any other enterprise wide applications (SAP, Oracle Financials etc) there is considerable design required by business analysts to determine " what the business wants out of this product ".

This is essential if anyone is serious about using P3e for what it is designed for. My very first suggestion is for the intended users to draft an agreed user requirements spec. that will include well defined activity coding structures at enterprise level, enterprise WBS, enterprise resouce definitions, working calenders etc that are common across the company, you will then know what the targets are that you are aiming at. Hence the design/business analysis,

NB: Most of this information is available within other information systems i.e. Human Resources - Standard Resource definition etc.

Some experiences i have found (especially in the early days) was that there was a tendancy for planners to simply install the disk, run the software attempt to perform the functions of a Database Administrator,

(I have also seen DBAs trying to be planners which was even funnier) and then make up the requirements as they went along, find some functionality that was available in P3 that is no longer avialable, and then declare that P3e was useless.

As a first step i would suggest to anyone looking at P3e, is to run it as a prototype, determine what it is that P3 can not do that you would require from P3e, install P3e as a standalone/minmumal user environment group, have these users determine if P3e can satisfy the requirements that can not be met by P3, at the same time evaluating P3e for further functionality and feeding all of this information back to the design/business analysis.

If a decision is taken for a full implementation then there are things that Primavera do not tell you when selling the software, i.e. total cost of ownership, you have the some planners, will you need more, do you need additional DBAs, is you IT network robust/secure, how much will it cost to retrain existing planners etc, it all adds up, a £ 3 k piece of software can cost in excess of £ 75 k per user per year !

Finally if you do run with P3e on an enterprise scale, i used the word "MIGRATING to P3e" earlier on, migrating data once from P3 into P3e ...do not attemt to be passing data back wards and forwards every other period, you will get into a mess. You cutover...now use the new system.

Good Luck !!

Terus guna P3 3.1.
P3e/c membazirkan uang sahaja.

Abdullah Haji Hukum

I’ve been a P3 3.1 user for long enough time and i am just introduced to P3e 4.0, but i’m very disappointed when exploring P3e that there are some important feature missing, such as:
1. zig zag progress line
2. in p3 3.1 time scale we can combine calendar date & ordinal date but not in P3e.

Could you help me to find alternatives to overcome this problem?

Thks in advance

Like many companies, we are also evaluating P3e (as well as other products). Reading the forum posts here also help. Like reading the user comments on Amazon.com, they are more revealing than the publishers, and I give them more weight. Keep them coming.

Dear all

As I stated previously, P3e or P3e/c is very powerfuly if your company size is large as well as you have lots of project managers that require planning, project control and reporting. With the implementation experience I had I can divided into three groups of user during my implemenation of P3 to P3e/P3ec.
Group 1: Never use P3 or any scheduling software.
They are the fast adapter, they learn the software just as they use other software. Because they never explose to any P3 product they only complaint the feastures they require, like reporting... (they accept the system within 2-3 months)
Group 2: Experience P3 users; they find it very difficult to adopt the software and complaints after complaints on functions that either they use before in P3 or they know about.(It took more than 12 months before they realise the benefits outcast the disadvantages and still some of them are still resist the software)
Group 3: Experience P3 user who require to manage a no. of scheduler/planners and their programme. They had initially resist the system, however, once the enterprise functions is being utilised, they just love it. It allow them to better manager their schedulers as well as know exactly the schedule status, and with the web function. It is just not possible to manage these large amount of info in P3 before.

I suggest everyone look at their requirement prior to implement P3e or P3e/c. if only few no of large scale projects that is independent to each other and never require to merge. P3 standalone version
Lots of large scale projects that require to report and manage as a whole - P3e or P3e/c no double - but you have to remember to tell all your schedulers this is a new software do not compare the previous P3 experience. It is a painfull experience but worth it.
Lots of very small projects - if the projects is manage independently - you may consider whether to invest these amount of money is worth it. if the company do not have a existing effective system to manage these projects. P3e can save you time and effort on managing these projects. You have to do a cost / benefit analysis prior to deploy. But bare in mind that the benefits in Project Management is rather intangiable.

Good luck all and keep planning

I would appreciate if you can provide me with a list of specific features you like or you do not like and why, in order to compare side by side features.
Control & ease of use on report layouts.
Control of Time Scale on reports.
Handling of resource histograms by Trades, ie. Carpenters (ea), Electricians (ea) vs time periods.
Control & ease of use on screen size and lay out.
Communication with lower level software.
Identification of driving predecessors.
Methods for transfering (Mail Wizzard)of updating data and validation via internet, via other media.
Resource leveling.
Resource smoothing.
Check-in & check out.
File Comparison methods, Digger in P3 vs. P3e methods.
Ease of software installation by non-technical personnel in their machines, at the jobsite, away from Home Office.
Navigation in Pert View, Cosmic View.
Any other features, or lack of, you consider relevant.

I used both P3 and MSP since 98. I left MSP as P3 is true CPM tools. I found that P3 is effective and fast in core scheduling task while P3eC not. While reporting and ease of assecibility of data gives an advantage on P3eC, it would be least advantage if the core of these data i.e. from the scheduling task itself tend to be more like MSP, which is the core ground of utilise P3 instead of MSP back in years ago.

peace

Why don’t ya use another software if you got so many troubles with Primavera...

I published a book recently on P3e & P3e/c. It is aimed at teaching how to schedule and progress a single project both with and without resources.

It is designed to be used as:
1. A training course handout, or
2. A self teach book, or
3. A reference book.

I am in the process of updating the book from Version 3.5 to Version 4.0 but this will take a few months to finish. There appears to be only a few changes in the areas my book cover as most on the enhancements appear in the collaboration functions of the product.

You may download the table of contents and some sample chapters from my web site.

I have spent some spent explaining the differences between P3e & P3e/c and the following three products - MSP, P3 and SureTrak. This should help with people cross grading.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers, Training & Consulting
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Tim your approach to evaluate before converting is without any doubt very wise, you might get an unpleasant surprise. Your neeeds seems to be similar to ours, a typical Construction Company.

Please after 2 to 3 months of evaluating P3e include your comments in the forum, being specific as to the advantages and disadvantages of either.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

I guess "IT" means "Information Technology" not "Construction Manager" whose needs are very different from IT or Manufacturing.

It is not database statistics the only issue, I dont get impressed by statistics alone. It is not an issue of thousands of users of siple schedules sharing resources among them. It is an issue of large jobs usually not sharing resources among them.

As a matter of fact for a contruction delay claim a schedule tying together different contracts/jobs would not be accepted.

I percieve satisfaction among IT Professionals, specially those with Primavera interests while at the same time I percieve dissatisfaction among experienced Construction Managers.

Don’t take me wrong, Primavera is the best option, MS Projet Professional is still a "toy". Just please improve P3e once and for all while providing a compatible and afordable stand alone option similar to P3 & Suretrak.

Tony,
I understand your feelings but you should expect anything at the open forums. You joined planning professionals community and want to leave it because of the forum guests behaviour. We are here to learn from each other and not just to help. You will miss this learning opportunity and nobody will win from your decision. I ask you to stay though I am not P3 user and actually is involved in the development of the product that competes with Primavera. In such forums we can share our knowledge and make our products better to the everybody’s benefit.
Nobody will win if you will not change your mind.
With the best regards and the personal request to stay with us,
Vladimir Liberzon, PMP

(from the first forum guest- have not posetd since)

I have no wish to make this personal (unlike the other Forum guest), but can I suggest you could spend your time more usefully putting P3e right instead of posting endless messages here?

Try telling that to my one-armed planner!

You can write what you like, as can the other forum guests who might also work for Primavera who have posted here.

In my opinion as an upgrade to P3 it just isn’t that good. This is based on over 25+ years of working with planning/corporate tools and specifically 4 months on P3e/c working with projects totalling over 20,000 activities.

This forum is the place to express personal opinions about products but it is not the place to make derogatory personal comments and therefore I edited the previous reply.

All members either, as guests, or logged in members should keep all their correspondence at a professional level and not resort to personal criticism on other people and their contributions.

Hi Tony Banks,
I am curious if you worked with the Eagle Ray team too?
Best Regards,
Vladimir Liberzon

You wouldn’t be the Tony Banks that worked for Primavera would you?

After having used P3e for the last few years we have just tabled our latest list of bugs to Primavera, most of which we are told will be fixed in the next release. Now where have I heard that before?

I’m sure it will be a fantastic tool when it’s finished.

They have included the necking (plus many more) great enhancements with version 4.0. The product is far superior to the old Btrieve P3 product in every way! Version 3.5.1 of P3e/c WAS lacking some of the features of version P3, however it more than made up for those missing features in terms of enterprise business value. Some of the capabilities in P3e/c 3.5.x are far superior to anything that P3 would be able to do!

Version 4.0 takes that even further. Please contact your P3e/c distributor for a detailed overview of version 4.0.

P3e is an extremely reliable and bug free tool (more so that P3 was). It would seem that you must be having some problems specifically in terms of your use of the tool and obtaining the output that you need.
I would suggest you contact the person who supplied the evaluation software and ask them for feedback / assistance.