Is it really necessary to learn P3ec in lieu of P3 3.1?

Sigfredo

No one can force you to do anything (work related) except your boss, I guess to some extends.

We are here do discuss pro and con of a product and do we really need to jump ship??

Is the new ship bigger better?? (or too big may be)
Is the new ship bigger and harder to drive??
Is the old ship start to sink??
Is everyone already on board the new ship?? (of course not in this case)
Is the new ship faster??

You need to judge it by yourself! in this forum you will find around 50/50 in IT forum you may find 80/20 in favorable of P3e.

If P3 fit your organisation, your personal need, running the projects in perfect control no room for improvement, that is fine we are not here to force you.

Alex

Hi Alex,

Your 50/50 or 80/20 is not supported by a scientific study so again, please stop making assumptions. If that’s what you believe in, I respect that.

Cheers,

Se

Se

You are right I am not a bean counter or scientist ... That’s my feeling, if you are not agree. Good.
BTW PP admin should run a voting page for P3 3.1 to P3e 5.0 funcitionality comparison by %
and
Do you perfer P3 over P3e base on you used both product.

That way we can see some scientific result.

Good Idea??

:-o

Alex

Hi,

As you mentioned Primavera has not stopped developing P3 3.1. P3e is an extension of P3 3.1. When they try to develop P3 to the next level, in addition to bring new concept etc., It is not possible to incorporate all features in one go. (Including few old one)

Primavera has to put their heart and soul in P3e development and acceptance from users (including standalone user) to move from P3. Otherwise users will get back to P3 and say bye to P3e.

If you look at the nearest popular product (not featurewise) is Microsoft. When they try to match P3e, they are just try to copy the P3e idea. They are incorporating various products to address the P3e Suite applications. Eg. SharePoint Portal.

In today’s project environment, Web based application, workflow, Knowledge Management, Document Management etc are part of the whole PMO package. So Primavera is trying to address all the areas. Even lot of major companies are spending money to develop a kind of internal system to meet their requirements. It will be great if an off the shelf product is available in the market to address their 70-80% requirement, it is a great saving for the company. They can concentrate on their business domain rather than developing applications.

Even if we are trying to say some of the features are missing etc. See the bigger picture of it, I should be able to handle my project if I have a broadband Internet connectivity to access my project from anywhere. Web based access, Role based access, Security, reduced the Total cost of ownership, Integration, Workflow, Document Management etc. are must for any application viz., SAP, Maximo, PDS, Windchill.

So early adapters are always benefited in long run. Of course there may be product failures. So need to decide carefully. P3e can not be a failure product. I am not comparing application to application. For eg, take ERP implementation, it will take years to settle, but you can start seeing the benefits once settled. Success / Failure depends on the Organization culture and commitment. (SAP may have great success in company and a big failure in another).

If you have a faith in the company and product, you can start adopting and put the users in the learning curve. Decide to rollout P3e is not like P3 (at least for Medium to large scale organization). It is not just Upgrade, it more than that. Even though not like ERP implementation, but need that kind of systematic approach (Requirement Study, Pilot rollout, complete rollout) and COST. Since it is a role based application, it has a different learning curve depending on their roles. PM does not need to know the P3e PM module, he just needs a good basic knowledge of PM concepts and how to browse thro’ the web based application to find out what he wants. Scheduler / Planner is there to handle the heart of the system.

Schedulers / Planners can grow to next level with their IT knowledge as PM Functional Consulant. (If they are interested in that line). They are not only having the knowledge of handling project but also the kind of system required to meet the same. It is a new area of growth for them like ERP Functional Consultant. (I may be talking bit ambitious but it may be the reality)

Product meeting todays demand is a must. Products like Artemis, Niku, Microsoft etc are moving to Enterprise application. All products can’t meet their flagship product feature when they move on to new module. So when they try to address these, it is not possible to do in one go, that too for a product which has been a favourite over a decade.

Hope Primavera will continue to meet our demands at least for their Survival.

Bye

Hi,

As a suggestion for poll is a good idea. Instead simily asking for a vote, we can ask P3 users, top 5 reasons for not moving to P3e.

Second, what missing P3 feature they are looking for in P3e.

Bye

Hi,

Suggestion for poll is a good idea. Instead of simpily asking for a vote, we can ask the members to write Top 5 reasons for not moving from P3 to P3e.

Second, what missing P3 feature they are looking for in P3e.
(some of them think it is missing, but simple workaround may be available)

Sure it will be good learning curve for every one of us.

Hi Sudarshan,

Thanks for your input, I appreciate your patience and time. All the problems & issues have been reported to primavera, some of them are know issues. No ETA on this till time.

You have been repeatedly stating that this is an Enterprise application and not as P3, please remember that there has been million’s of projects controlled by p3 worldwide and many of them had 1000’s of activities on a multi-user environment. P3 also had a timesheet program called time sheet professional which was doing the same as the current time sheet application.p3 also had ODBC driver for all interface so that it could talk seamlessly to SAP/BAN & other ERP programs.The only disadvantage faced within last 3-4 years is evolvement in technology on 32bit & 64 bit OS.Since p3 is 16 bit betreive database it will be tough to be compliant on the new 64 bit and then on future upgrade of OS.

Now with the Enterprise version of Project Management software,p3e/c it should be more versatile. Hence I would like to know if you can generate some high level performance reports out of p3e/c.My database has 2 EPS on level 1 based on location and have several EPS broken down the line.Can I generate a report which shows on Level 1 which are the Project doing bad ie. Schedule wise (time) & Progress wise (Earned Value – Cost or resource) comparing to the plan.

Let me give an example so that it is crystal clear for you,if my EPS was Dubai & Abu Dhabi at level 1, and have Project 1-10 in Dubai and Project 11-18 in Abu Dhabi can I generate a performance report which shows as follows:

Dubai:

Project 1 - 14 days late

Project 3 – 10 days late

Project 8 – 10 days late

Abu Dhabi:

Project 12 – 45 days late

Project 15 - 30 days late

The same way the report on performance based on earned value comparing baseline.

Please let me know how would I do that.

Thanks,
Rajeev

I don’t understand what are you trying to prove Rajeev

If you define a portfolio for these projects you can run any report you want.

Furthermore I would not use the EPS for that purpose but add a project code with the country hierarchy (much more flexible). You can then group/filter by country and filter out all projects that have a negative finish variance (for instance)

HTH

Niek.

Hi Alex,

If PP Admin will initiate a vote P3 vs P3e/c,

I will vote for P3 because P3e/c is foreign to me. With all respect to all ideas about P3e/c, they are only good for those that have the opportunity to use P3e/c. I also don’t have plans to initiate P3e/c in my workplace.

Cheers,

Charlie

May this response will pass on the voting "for P3 or against P3e/c". Or we can start a new voting thread. But before that, we will continue with generating more information. Thank you.

Hi Niek,

Thanks for your response.I am not to proove anything,just to get some help and get things clarfied.

The EPS based on region was choosen as this was the way the business was made and had more sense looking overall strategies and policies.

Now i dont see a field called finish variance to filter in project view,please let me know which version of p3e are you using.

Also which filter would i use for poor performance based on earned value - cost.

Your help in this regards will be highly appreciated.

thanks,

Rajeev

Hi Rajeev,

The problem is not the version I’m using because the filtering options in the project view are rather limited. I guess that’s because Primavera wants you to use (read buy) Portfolio Analysis for that purpose.

That product will allow you to define a dynamic portfolio based on the criteria you want; for instance: finish variance, CPI, SPI, etc, etc.

If you don’t have Portfolio Analysis, you can also do this in Project Management (i.e. P3e) by using the report writer, because that will allow you to filter on project performance criteria.

HTH

Niek.

Hi Rajeev,

If I tell you that what you asking for can be easily complete in no time and I can set a layout when you open your project. Most likely you wont be agree, or believe me unless I hand held to complete the task.

Use you brain power to figure this out rather, we told you how to do it.

But dont tell you boss you can do it because you dont know , rather it is a software problem...

Alex

Neik,

Thanks for your help.Do you require license for portolio analysis or this comes with project management.I heard that ver 5.0 comes with windows client and web client so they must be packing all together with the single license.

thanks,

Rajeev

Hi Rajeev,

Thanks for complementing for what I have stated earlier on in this thread that most of the things which can be done in P3ec can be done also in P3 even with the earlier version which is 1.1. I used P3 1.1 - 8 users network version between 1997 upto 1999. Though we have not tried then to link 1.1 with SAP but I believe it can be done also in 1.1 as you stated. Sharing of resources is possible, security access can be implemented etc etc. What i am saying is all this talk about enterprise blablabla, it can be done in different ways. It doesn’t have to be influenced by one incomplete software.

I also stated in my previous post that for me the only advantage of P3ec is because it is 32bit or 64bit compliant which you also stated and because 3.1 is not anymore being developed.

Cheers,
Sigfred

Bill

You will care when at some point in the future your 16 bit applications will no longer run or run with difficulty and you get no tech support.

That’s the real issue to me not which tool gives a "better" schedule today. P3e may or may not be a better tool than P3 right now but ultimately it will be because it’s the only one that is being developed by Primavera.

FWIW There are things I like and dislike about both. To be fair we aren’t really comparing like with like though. P3e is much more than P3. Others have covered the differences so I won’t repeat what has already been stated.

I’ve recommended to my employer that we investigate the latest issue and begin to develop a strategy for transition away from P3 3.1. That is driven by the supportability issue. I don’t think that the transition should begin next week though.

Cheers

Neik,

Based on your advise i updated my license with portfolio analysis but lost almost a day because of problems in software as mentioned by Alex.

I created a user portfolio with filter criteria for finish variance,statement with finish variance greater than 1.
This was based on the tip help that finish variance = current finish - primary baseline.looking at the projects listed i found there was some problem.

The tip help calculation did not match the calculation of value in the database, it was calculating baseline-current finish.

so i had to change the criteria, i called primavera they said it is an error (typo).

Later i found that it does not group by EPS,it was only able to list by WBS.Project level was the highest and no EPS.The grouping said EPS but the application would not do that.I thought i was doing something wrong and called primavera,they said try live data option still did not work.

So they concluded that it is bug and as usual will report to development.Finally all my efforts went in vain as i could not generate a report i wanted.I cannot agree with you that this is a stable program and is a tool for project management enterprise wide .....

Looking forward to your inputs if any.

thanks,

Rajeev

Rajeev,

Please read carefully what I’ve sent you in the past.

Here is my reply from September 8th:

"Furthermore I would not use the EPS for that purpose but add a project code with the country hierarchy (much more flexible). You can then group/filter by country and filter out all projects that have a negative finish variance (for instance)

Moving away from your current collision course with the product will save you a lot of frustration and avoid me from explaining things twice.

Thanks,

Niek (not Neik)

Niek

Dont worry! you are the the first one, Rajeev got my name wrong as well. Anyway if Rajeev is reading our posts, he should be able to create it without trouble. I think (IMHO) some users still in the denied stage. Dont want to learn dont want to listen. It will take time and some user may never convert. Just like PASCAL programmer how many you can find in this world.

Cheers

Alex

Dear all!
I am too new into planning(only two years)considering the experience some of you have but I am provoked to write after reading so many comments:-

1. P3.1 was not really sportive to new planners. It is so difficult to get a hang of it when one is new. But yes this difficulty allowed planners (who knew Primavera) gain that Halo status in organizations....no wonder everyone wants to learn it these days. This difficulty is removed in P3e/c.by simplified MSP like ease in creating and handling schedules.

2. For a company that needs to get a roll up of cost at an enterprise level (to fix pricing for a product for example), it’s possible in case of P3e/c
3. The main reason for which it scores over P3.1 is its ease of handling; one can easily insert, delete, and shift WBS. Can import, export projects very easily.

And for a planner that already knows P3, learning P3e/c. is a piece of cake.

"The illiterate of 21st century is not one who cannot read or write, but one who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." Alvin Toffler

Hi guys,

I recently had problems in grouping activities by float and was told that it was due to edging.Can any of you p3ec gurus throw some light on this ?

Next has anybody found a way to reflect late date constraints on activites (late finish constraint to reflect contractual milestones)

thanks,

Rajeev

Hi Niek/Alex,

My apologies for spelling your name wrong and thanks & appreciate for your valuable input.I know you always have some round-about for problems,the round-about manual seems to be very big.

Thanks,

Rajeev