(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
HI
I wonder how many people out there have had enough of P6. I have been around for many years using Artemis, Open Plan, MS Project and P3. In my opinion there was nothing wrong with p3 except that primavera had mainly captured the project scheduling market and their cash flow was probably slowing down; they therefore did what all good managers of a captured market do - they changed the product to a piece of garbage that is so difficult to manage that it's getting us planners a bad name. You will note that not long after moving us all over to this new system the current owners promptly sold it to a company where you cannot speak to people, at least with the old Primavera if you had a problem you could call and speak to someone knowledgeable.
In my opinion what an absolute disaster and I wonder how long it will be before they go the same way as Artemis and other predecessors. By the way I have been trying to use this for some time now and have reached the point where I can't be bothered, time to change my occupation to something more simple like a Project Manager or a rocket scientist.
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Many "Old New" Software does not even correctly models partial assignments.
Suppose you have 10 rodmen assigned 30% to activity 1, 30% to activity 2 and 30% of their time to activity 3.
Would you spilt the resources in 3 10% each, so a 30% means 10 "butts" assigned to activity 1 or perhaps 10 "heads" assigned to activity 2 and so on. Or maybe 3 rodmen to each activity, but they must work together! How would you know which on your reports?
Maybe you have 3 rodmen on each activity assigned 20% of the activity duration and the supervisor 25% of his time on each activity whenever the rodmen are assigned (25% of 30%).
The following is a very common assignment where you have several multi-resources or crews with different work loads and within each crew you have resources with different workloads as well.
Many are stuck on the 1960's CPM functionality not on the more modern modeling functionality. The list on missing functionalities on these self proclaimed "modern and capable" software is big, very big.
I concur with everthing said here.
As I keep telling Primavera - all I need is P3.1 interfaced to a 32 bit database.
P6 with have to get to P66 before its as good as P3.1.
Primavera (now Oracle) do not listen. In a seminar they set up 3 years ago 80% of Civil Engineers voted for P3.1 not P6.
By the way - how do you know someone works for Primavera? You can hear their knuckles dragging on the ground..
Chears Richard
George,
Thanks for the reply. The problem was fixed and several clients are now using the system.
As for the QP project, the primary reason the project was binned was because IMMPOWER SP did not interface with SAP.
Regards,
Myles
Mike, Sandy and George,
Can your software model correctly the following, a very basic basic shift work scenario? So simple it is just a single activity model, should be a piece of cake for you to model with your eyes closed.
Activity 1
500cm rock excavation
Resource 1 production 10cm/hr and works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10hrs/day
Resource 2 production 15cm/hour and works on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10 hrs/day
If activity starts on Monday:
Monday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Tuesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 50 cm in about 3 hours
Activity will take 3 days 3 hours.
If activity starts on Wednesday :
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm Friday =>> Resource 2 will produce 100 cm in about 7 hours
Activity will take 2 days 7 hours.
The model shall be capable of correctly adjust activity duration deppending on when it starts, obviously resource constraining shall work in harmony.
You can change resources to represent machines working at night with a lower productivity but less noisy. One of the many real life possibilities.
I believe that if if P6 nor Asta can model the simple scenario then they should be less capable of modeling more complex scenarios, many of which are everyday needs. Sorry my friends, life is not so simple.
The need for true modeling of the above and many other resource loading scenarios are lacking on many software that call themselves capable when in reality they are not. Forcing the use of substandard software by contract specifications instead of allowing for free choice is doing more harm than good. Same as the practice for not allowing for an early target schedule in the hope eventually the job will finish on time.
Anyway I congratulate you all for showing the need for alternatives.
Regards,
Rafael
Hi Sandy
Artemis was my first planning software back in the mid 80's but I ditched it as soon as I knew about PowerProject by Asta.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Perhaps we need to start an "Artemis appreciation" forum. 20 years ago I could produce all my charts, histograms, tables etc (always updated related to current schedule) from one package. And do practical and understandable resource levelling and date calculations. Now I am bodging about with a software which does not handle calendars correctly and sending data to and from excel. Well Friday aftenoon and off to the pub (did that 20 years ago also)!
Hi to all
I wan to share my stupidity with you all. I had another problem with my program and that was due to the lack of experience in the panning. In the initial stage my consultant asked me not to provide the progress from the program but direct from the B.O.Q. manually. Due to lack of experience, I did not load quantities in my program. But now (when the project is over 60%) the consultant asked me to provide the progress percentage trough the program. That made me discouraged and I was really too angry upon my self on this stupidity. Any way, by the help of Allah subhanau wa ta’ala, I got the idea of using create reflection. I restored my baseline, made the reflection of both the base and the current program and start modifying those. Mean time I kept my program updating. When completed my modification and got that approved by the consultant, I merged the changes and Alhamdu Lillah now the consultant is quite happy with it. As a new programmer it was a big achievement for me.
Hi Steven
Thanks for the feed back and yes I agree with all your comments and like you say we just have to stick with and and try very hard to prevent the software becoming the planner. Roll on the lottery win and then they can do what they like with it.
Regards
George
Hi George,
I couldn't agree more - P6 is a clunky application that is difficult to use and has to be 'forced' to do many things that should be routine. I started my planning career just as computers were being introduced and I cut my teeth on Artemis 6000 and I LOVED it. Ironically, the fact that it wasn't a GUI package didn't bother me because the flexibility of the software was amazing. Some might say that Artemis was clunky because it didn't have a GUI, but I would argue that Artemis was actual a very elegant tool, once you had a grasp of the simple language you could make her dance!
I remember DIS DEF DAT with great fondness and I'd go back to Artemis 6000 in a heartbeat. I think there were 2 main reason for its demise -
The first is that because it was not something that the management could look at and understand as a software package, so they didn't like it. It created a group of experts that companies couldn't live without and as a result, they were, in some cases, held to ransom by these critical resources and as soon as that heppened once the companies were immediately looking for something, anything, that would dissolve the Artemis planner's power.
The second reason for the replacement of AR6k was the sheer expense. Between the cost of the licences and support and the training involved in making somebody competent with the tool, it was horrifically expensive. So, when the likes of MS Project came along all of a sudden there is a planning tool that looked good, had a GUI that people could access immediately, management could see what was going on and even dabble. And it cost a small fraction of the Artemis costs. No more Mainframe or Winchester disks. The fact that MS Project couldn't count back then (and even now it has its moments) didn't bother those with the purse strings. It was cheap and it sort of worked so that's close enough.
It certainly wasn't replaced because the planners couldn't do what was required, management wasn't getting the reports they needed, the general workforce wasn't being given the appropriate planning support or the clients weren't happy with the reporting or interfacing. Everything comes down to cost/benefit and in managements eyes it was just too damned expensive....and now, it's time to get dressed and go to work for another joyous day at the office, wrestling with P6 and its foibles and dreaming of DIS DEF DAT and the days when I was in control of the software and not the other way around.
Steven
Hi Myles
I'm not doing shutdowns and I do have to use Primavera P6 which is the company standard but I donlt like it. I did like Primavera P3 which I though was a useful tool but they went and changed it all to P6 and in my opinion they have put the usefulness of the tool ( for planning and scheduling) back by years.
Regarding Immpower SP, funnily enough I was involved in beta testing this about 10 years ago in Qatar when QP wanted to introduce it, I did all the training courses and was constantly in touch with the head office in Canada. I also carried out training courses in Doha for the local QP personnel. It reminded me very much of old Artemis and it was very clumsy, however one real problem that I found was that when scheduling it always returned a remaining duration of 1 unit for all completed activities, which was no use for any kind of planning never mind shutdowns. If you had 4 activities in a chain and 3 were completed the 4th always started on the 4 time unit after timenow and not on timenow as you would expect. Unfortunately because of this we never progressed it and it was binned. Immpower knew about this hiccup but had no intention of fixing it due to the fact that no one was really using their product and they didn't want to spend any more money on it. I assume that they did eventually fix this if you have been using it or know of it being used.
Regards
George
If you're using Primavera for shutdown, turnaround, or outage planning, then I suggest you take a look at IMMPOWER SP.
Regards,
Myles Owens
HI Brian
Thanks for the feedback and yes we must be in the same place and i well remember DIS DEF DAT ( going back a bit now though). I agree totally with what you say and yes retirment is not that far away but we still have to persevere with this monstrosity. The great pity is that I was a fan of P3 and I can't see what the need was to change it except that all time motivator CASH.
Anyway lets keep smiling and taking the pills.
Regards
George
George, we must have been around at the same time, as I remember all those planning tools as well. What ever happened to DIS DEF DAT?
I am of the same opinion as yourself and have been advising Project Control Managers (and Project Managers if they'll listen) to revert back to 3.1 for the last 5 years.
I believe Primavera intended P3e (and later versions) to be more like MS Project in it's operation, thinking it would make it more appealing to Managers, but ended up alienating the very users that have to rely on the software to advise those very same Management.
My last overseas project in Germany was a classic example. The Project was utilising MS Project because everyone (including the Contractors) was familiar and was using the software. The (New) Project Director insisted that the planning tool should be the latest Primavera, even though no one on the project had used it or was familiar with the software.
I was called as an expert user to try and sort the confusion out after the incumbents had failed to use the Primavera software to create a base schedule after 8 months. It took me the best part of 8 weeks as a proficient Primavera user to create the base line, because the people it was supposed to help were not familiar with the resultant layouts and filtering facilities. With over 200 A3 pages I was not going to give everyone their own copy without filtering for their relevant tasks and information.
The most infuriating thing for me in P6 is when you save a print and a layout, the next layout brings the same print information from your most recent print operation, even if it's a totally different project. You need to look at the top and bottom information every time. Not a problem in P3 - all printing titles ad revision boxes were saved with the layout, making report production so much easier.
I can only hope that Project Management will come to their senses and listen to the planners for a change. Hey, maybe hell will freeze over yet!
Keep going George. If your as old as me, retirement can't be that far away.
Cheers
Brian
I agree with you all but the blame is not on Primavera/ORACLE, they cannot even get rid of the bugs after a decade working on them.
Blame the planners who do not dare to raise the voice and are afraid of others interpreting their complain as an excuse for their inability to use and install an "easy to use" software or incapable of "learning something new", like learning a more capable and easier to use software. Beware that more capable software does not means more difficult, on the contrary shall go hand on hand.
Keep raising the voice of protest, keep complaining about requiring a specific software other than your choice. We are moving backwards to the days of B&W TV on our software.
Of course that I never have problems with my software and it takes me less than two minutes to install an enterprise version shall be interpreted as I am better than those so dumb that cannot even install their own software.
I feel like I won the lotto, I can distribute thousands of viewers to anyone interested on reading my CPM files and have access to all database fields. How about you? I do even have the power to make them more intelligent as for them to install the viewer without any problem.
Hi Andy
Yes right . To be honest I used P3 for years and found it to be useful and good, however since Primavera have decided to go down the roue of an all encompassing Project Management package rather than a project Planning package they have added too many bells and whistles, and changed the simplest of operations into difficult ones. In my opinion is now a package that is of limited use to planners because it is so cumbersome and complicated that we cannot get to do planning because we are too busy trying to work the software. I'm of the old school where the planner does the work and the software is just one of the many tools that we use to do our job and not the other way round ( ie. the software being the planner and the planner being a tool of the software).
Cheers
George
George,
Could not agree more.
I have used various packages and am still waiting for someone to show me why P6 is so great!
It appears to be a trend, if you don't like P6 you can't be a planner, yeah right!!
Andy
Hi Vladimir
Thanks for your feedback. I have heard of Spider project, i worked in Moscow for 1.5 years and the lads there had used it and liked it. I will have a look at it, thanks for the link.
Best Regards
George
George,
try Spider Project. It is much more powerful than Primavera, but installation will take less than 2 minutes. no external software except some version of Windows is required, no database administration or other special IT knowledge is needed.
Projects can be imported and exported to MS Project and P6. Though some special Spider fields will be lost it will be easy to communicate with others that use these tools.
Download Spider Demo from http://www.spiderproject.ru/demo_e.php and let me know if you will have any questions.
Spider Project is mature (born in 1992) and most reliable. In East Europe it is used for management of most large scale programs.
Best Regards,
Vladimir
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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