P6 Planning Software

Chris,

If you know P3, you can easily learned P6, basically, the features are similar in many ways except some, I find the report generation very poor and cumbersome especially when they have so many additional fields which makes it very confusing.

If you have any specific problem, raise it here,  and I am sure you will get help or tips.

Cheers,

Daniel

Chris,

I suspect you have been using another software package up until now, and are having difficulty getting P6 to work in the same fashion?

This is a common problem -those of us who "grew up" on P3 and P6 find MS Project (for example) diffcult to predict and frustrating to use, and visa versa.

Each planning software has it's own terminology and scheduling philosophy, and they do not align (indeed often contradict) with each other.

e.g Primavera planners hate the way MS Project allows unprogressed activities to lie behind the status date, thinking it should work the same as the data date they are used to.

While MS Project planners hate the way Primavera changes dates and durations whenever you move the data date, thinking it should work the same as their status date.

I'm afraid the only solution is to knuckle down and learn the software your client requires.

I find the help function of primavera is actually pretty good at explaining the terminology and functionality. And of course, Planning Planet is excellent for getting help with specific problems.

Hi Gary

I  would really like to get to understand P6 - if only I could get the software to start.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Hi Chris

  Your quote.

I am finding this software unpredictable difficult to use and understand.

I have the same comments from some of the project team members whom are no professional planners or schedulers. This is particular true  for engineers, procurement persons and fabrication en construction supervisors. I give, special for these team members, courses how to read and understand the schedules we produce. This is sometime also required for the client. I have made a website special dedicated to this subject because an schedule people cannot read or understand is losing a lot of its power. I agree with Gary that the only option is to learn the software your client requires. P6 is maybe difficult to understand and to learn but it is not unpredictable. I find P6 a very power full  and useful  tool to plan and schedule project planning as a stand alone version but when you are having multiple projects for different clients at at multiple work sites using the same labor pool then P6 is very powerfull tool.   

In case you are interested in the website, please check the link http://plannenvoornietplanners.net/   In English this means Planning for non planners.

Regards Johannes

Mike,

There is no need to complicate your life, you are an Asta PP user which is excellent software. So good it even has add-ons for forensic purposes.

Asta Monte Carlo is based on the same engine as Asta while some other software run Monte Carlo using different software engine that model resource leveling differently and even some constraints are modeled differently yielding different values of float, a different model. In the case your analysis require statistical modeling better stick to Asta PP.

In your case, as a forensic annalist, it might be better strategy to stick with Asta as the other party might not be proficient using Asta PP and this will put them in difficult situation. I believe no court of law can force you to use other software than your choice on a claim after the contract is completed, no prohibition on the contract shall be valid after the contract ends.

Are you going to tell me court will make decisions based on a single particular software and will ban others? What if the court choice is not a good one?

It does not have to be under the terms of the other side, if it is your claim you decide how to present it. Make them play under your terms, use functionality they do not have so they must play by your rules.

Suggest using different lag calendars to those of successors and predecessors this for a start will make it harder to the other side.

In my case I would prefer using Spider Project partial assigments and teams to model shift work on a single activity, which is hard to model on some software other than using frequent manual adjustments or using additional activities that in reality wont do the work.

Best Regards,

Rafael

Hi Chris,

If you have specific questions I will try yo answer them.

Also I could try to get you a copy of the P6 documentation in pdf.

Regards,

Arend

Chris,

"I have been a construction planner for 25 years yet the way this program behaves means that I must be out of touch or does the emperor really have no cloths on?"

It is confidential information Obama is Danish, do not let Donald Trump hear this. Even though I am no demperor or professional planner I am with you.

It is easier to blame it on you, on your lack of experience, on you never being a professional than accepting the reality, you are an experienced scheduler and what you are saying is shared by many. It is the offensive approach to keep you on the defensive, to keep you shut down. If you say you do not like it or that it is bad they will say it is because of your fault, a disguised slap on your face.

Well my friend in my neighborhood we do not like people slapping at others, we usually retaliate such an offense. You said it very clearly, you are experienced, you have work for decades with software that is not so cumbersome and I agree 100% with you.

Just take a look at how many have not even being able to make a single installation of the software while it takes me 2 minutes to download and install the full enterprise version of my software. I would call it extremely inefficient for the task at hand, a poor choice, mainly because of the database engine that takes 20x times the storage space of the CPM engine, roughly 600MB versus 30MB. It is incredible so many hundreds of megabytes and still far from a piece of cake, sometimes even incompatible with newer operating systems that are not so new.

Best regards,

Rafael