Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project And Portfolio Management

Table of ContentsUpdating project statusAuto compute actualsPercent completeEntering hoursActual datesActual er 10: Project Templates203Chapter 11: Portfolios211Chapter 12: Portfolio Analysis223Chapter 13: Measuring and Scoring Projects239Creating a new project templateCreating a template from an existing projectCreating a new project from a templateInserting a WBS into an existing projectSummaryManaging portfoliosCreating a portfolioPortfolio ViewsScenariosUser Defined Fields (UDFs)Summary204206207208210212213214218219222The Portfolio Analysis screenScorecardsChoosing data to displayColumnsWaterlineGraphical displaysPie chartsHistogramsSide-by-side histogramStacked histogramBubble chartsSummaryScoring projectsCreating and using scenariosWaterline 6238239242244246

Table of ContentsChapter 14: Capacity Planning and ROI247Chapter 15: Dashboards261GeneralPortfolio ViewsProject PerformanceResourcesPersonal InformationCustom Portlets268268269272276278Capacity PlanningFrame A—scorecardFrame B—Gantt chartFrame C—resources and rolesFrame D—Resource and Role UsagePutting it all togetherReturn on Investment (ROI)SummaryDashboard examples:Managing dashboardsCustomizing a dashboardContent tab247249251252253256256259262264267267Dashboard LayoutAccessSummary279280281Chapter 16: Resource Management283Appendix A: Integrations293PlanningPlanning by projectPlanning by resourceSplittingAssignmentsResource analysisSummaryIntegration overviewIntegration benefits283285286287288290292293294Enforcing best practicesEnsuring data integrityFewer people handling more projects295295296Integration pitfalls296Over-analysisImposing external cultureUnderestimating technical skillset296297298[ vi ]

Table of ContentsIntegration possibilitiesIntegration technologyJD EdwardsE-Business SuitePeopleSoftSummary298298299301304305Appendix B: Reporting307Reporting from ProfessionalScreen printingReports307308310Editing reports312Reporting from the web clientScreen printingBI PublisherSummary313314314318Index319[ vii ]

PrefaceOracle Primavera P6 is the most sophisticated and widely-used project portfoliomanagement software in the world today. Some people think of P6 as simply atool for scheduling projects, such as Microsoft Project, but on steroids. But whileP6 can be used to plan a project a simple as writing one book, it can also be usedto plan and manage a multi-year, globally-distributed set of engineering projectsinvolving tens of thousands of workers, machines, and materials. When used to itsfullest, it can give an organization the ability to manage current projects, plan futureprojects, and make key metrics to improve processes and ensure future success.Primavera P6 is a vast product, with so many parts and features that it can seemoverwhelming to the new user. And there are many aspects to discuss under thetopic P6, such as the system architecture and database models, the various APIsand how they work, and fine-tuning P6 for optimal performance under varyingconditions. There are also many books on project management and scheduling,centered around the principles set forth in the Project Management Body ofKnowledge (PMBOK).This book is designed to be a gentle introduction to P6, covering all of the mainaspects of the product from a user's point of view. Novices to P6 may read thisbook from end to end, trying out the features and working through the examplesas they read along. For those who already know P6, or perhaps P3, OpenPlan, orsome similar product, this book serves as a refresher and shows the capabilitiesof P6 in its current release, what features there are, what they are for, and how touse them. Each chapter of this book covers one or more core features, and each ofthese features can be explored at a much greater depth than can be contained inthese pages. It is the sincere hope of the authors that this book will serve yourneeds as you and your team use Primavera P6 to manage your projects and tocontinually improve your project management expertise.

PrefaceWhat this book coversChapter 1, Getting Started with Oracle Primavera P6, reviews the history and coreconcepts of P6 and introduces the new features in version 8.Chapter 2, Getting Around: Understanding and Customizing the P6 Interface, walks youthrough logging into P6 Professional and P6 web, and gives an overview of the keymenus and screens in both applications. Users will also be shown how to customizethe screens to best meet their needs.Chapter 3, Organizing your Projects with EPS, OBS, and WBS, introduces theorganizational elements of P6. The Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) organizesprojects, and the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) organizes people.Traditionally, EPS matches internal divisions within a company, and OBS matchesthe employee hierarchy. We also show how the WBS is used to organize work withina project. This chapter also covers how OBS relates to project access and security.Chapter 4, Creating a New Project and Work Breakdown Structure, takes readers throughsetting up a new project, detailing all of the decision points including how to enterWBS according to best practices. We also discuss creating project codes and showhow codes are used for other P6 entities as well. The chapter closes with a discussionof importing projects into P6 from other sources.Chapter 5, Adding Activities and Relationships, shows the many types of activities andexplains the relationships that can be created between them.Chapter 6, Resources, discusses resources and roles, how they are created, organized,and used globally and within projects. This chapter will also cover how costs areassociated with roles and resources.Chapter 7, Scheduling and Constraints, zeros in on the heart of P6 scheduling. It willdiscuss the algorithms used and how to run schedule calculations. It also explainsthe many different settings in P6 that affect the scheduling algorithm.Chapter 8, Issues and Risks, illustrates how to keep projects on track using issues andrisks. Readers will learn to create, manage, and report on issues. Readers will alsolearn how to create project risks and how to track, manage, and report on risks.Chapter 9, Baselines and Statusing, describes how to manage changes in a projectschedule using baselines. We also discuss updating project status and entering actuals.Chapter 10, Project Templates, illustrates the concept of project templates, which canbe used to quickly generate new projects in a consistent manner.[2]

PrefaceChapter 11, Portfolios, steps above the project level and discusses portfolios, how tocoherently manage and analyze sets of projects. In this chapter, we show how tocollect projects into static and dynamic portfolios. Readers will learn about keybuilt-in project-level fields and how to group data for Portfolio Analysis. We alsodiscuss user-defined fields (UDFs) and how to use these when creating portfolios.Chapter 12, Portfolio Analysis, introduces the tools of portfolio analysis, such asscorecards and graphs, and shows how to use these to compare portfolio data.Chapter 13, Measuring and Scoring Projects, discusses creating portfolio scenarios,scoring projects, and using waterline analysis.Chapter 14, Capacity Planning and ROI, shows how to use P6 to plan out resource usageacross projects. We also discuss how P6 calculates Return on Investment (ROI).Chapter 15, Dashboards, presents real-time reporting using dashboards. Theseallow users to focus on the data they need the most. We show the wide variety ofdashboards available, and how to customize and make your own dashboards.Chapter 16, Resource Management, discusses the features of P6 that allow you tomanage resources across the enterprise by analyzing resource requirements,requesting resources for projects, and committing resources to projects.Appendix A, Integrations, gives a high-level overview of the key integrationsprovided by Oracle that tie data between P6 and each of Oracle's three keyERP systems—E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards.Appendix B, Reporting, discusses the many ways to obtain and view data fromP6, including screen printing and the built-in reporting engine in P6 Professional,and using BI Publisher in P6 EPPM.What you need for this bookIn order to get the most out of this book it is helpful to have a copy of P6 at handso that you may try out the concepts for yourself. It is also very helpful to haveone or more actual projects to work with, so that you can apply what you learnas you read along.The easiest way to obtain P6 is to visit edelivery.oracle.com. If you do not alreadyhave an Oracle account, go ahead and make one, as it costs nothing and gives youaccess to a wide variety of resources, such as forums.oracle.com and support.oracle.com, which contains a rich variety of knowledge articles and allows you tocommunicate with other Primavera users and the Oracle support team.[3]

PrefaceOnce you have logged-in and read and accepted the licensing terms and restrictions,you may search for and download many Oracle products. Choose the Product Packcalled Primavera Applications and then choose the proper platform that you need.Note that the screen will show many Primavera products besides P6, and willshow many versions of P6 as well. By default, the products are arranged by releasenumber. It is helpful to click on the Updated column twice so that the productsare sorted by the one most recently updated. In the following screenshot we havehighlighted P6 Enterprise version 8.2:P6 Professional is in general much easier to install on your own system. P6Enterprise (the web version) will require a greater deal of technical know-how,as you will be installing WebLogic and BI Publisher as well as P6.[4]

PrefaceIf your company already has an installation of P6, then see if you can have someonecreate a database instance just for you to work with as you go through the book. Thiswill allow you to try out all of the functionality of P6 without the risk of altering theproduction-level system.Who this book is forThis book is for people who are new to P6 and who want an overview of thefull product, and for people who are familiar with P6 or similar products, whowant to understand the features available in version 8. It is a broad outline of P6,covering all of the aspects of the product. The reader is expected to have some basicunderstanding of scheduling concepts, as this book is by no means a stand-aloneintroduction to that vast topic!While reading this book, the reader is encouraged to follow along and try out theideas presented in each chapter. Hands-on experience, using real-world projects,is the best way to master P6.ConventionsIn this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish betweendifferent kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and anexplanation of their meaning.New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on thescreen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: The RoleLimit may be selected from either the resource limit of the Primary Resource or thecustom limit assigned to the Role.Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.Tips and tricks appear like this.Reader feedbackFeedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think aboutthis book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important forus to develop titles that you really get the most out of.[5]

PrefaceTo send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to feedback@packtpub.com,and mention the book title through the subject of your message.If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writingor contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.Customer supportNow that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things tohelp you to get the most from your purchase.ErrataAlthough we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakesdo happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text orthe code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you cansave other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of thisbook. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, andentering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submissionwill be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website, or added to any listof existing errata, under the Errata section of that title.PiracyPiracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media.At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If youcome across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, pleaseprovide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we canpursue a remedy.Please contact us at copyright@packtpub.com with a link to the suspectedpirated material.We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring youvaluable content.QuestionsYou can contact us at questions@packtpub.com if you are having a problem withany aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.[6]

Getting Started withOracle Primavera P6In this chapter, we introduce Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project PortfolioManagement or P6 for short. P6 is used worldwide to schedule projects in a rangeof industries, including construction, energy, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, IT, andfinance, to name a few. At first glance, the program may appear daunting in thescope of its capabilities. It is the hope of the authors that this book will establishfor our readers a strong foundation in P6 that will allow them to use P6 withconfidence on a daily basis.In this chapter we will cover: Product history What's in the Name? P6 Core Concepts What's New in P6 Release 8Product historyThe core concepts of project scheduling were laid down in the years following WorldWar II, as construction projects in the United States became larger and more complex.By the 1960s, these concepts were being implemented in mainframe computers by suchentities as DuPont, IBM, and the U.S. military.

Getting Started with Oracle Primavera P6In 1983, Joel Koppelman and Dick Faris founded Primavera Systems in Philadelphia.Their vision was that these same principles of project management could beimplemented on desktop PCs, which were then just making their way into commonuse. The first product went on sale in 1983, available on a set of 5¼-inch floppy disksthat held a whopping 360 KB of data each. The application required 256 KB of RAMto run, which was quite a lot at the time.And so Primavera Project Planner (P3) was born. The company was quite successfuland eventually P3 became the leading scheduling product in the engineering andconstruction industries. In fact, it soon became a requirement for certain governmentcontracts that schedules could only be delivered in a P3-compatible format.In the late 1990s, with the rise of networks and the Internet, it became clear that thefuture of project scheduling software lay beyond a single product installed on oneperson's desktop. Instead, project scheduling was moving towards systems thatcould be accessed simultaneously by multiple people in different locations.In 1999, Primavera acquired Eagle Ray Software. This company had created aproduct in 1998 called Eagle Ray 1000 Project Management Suite. Primavera tookER1000 and released it as two products in 1999: P3 e/c, which was marketed forEngineering and Construction, and TeamPlay for IT and Financial services. Overthe years, the products have appeared to merge and diverge, adding capabilitiessuch as timesheet entry, integration, and portfolio analysis, eventually evolvinginto what is now called P6. In 2004, Primavera 5.0 was released, and in 2007, P6.0was released, followed by P6.2 in 2008.In 2008, another major change occurred. Primavera, a privately held company,was bought by Oracle, a publicly held corporation.Enter OracleIn 2008, soon after P6.2 came out, it was announced that Oracle Corporation wasbuying Primavera. Starting as a database provider in 1979, Oracle had grown overthe years into a large and influential company, focused not only on databases, buton providing an array of software products that are fundamental to managingmodern businesses. This array included enterprise resource planning (ERP)systems, content management systems, analytical and reporting systems, andapplication servers and technology, to describe just a few. In order to ensure thatthey also owned the best-of-breed in project scheduling software, Oracle acquiredPrimavera Systems in 2008.[8]

Chapter 1Since the acquisition, P6 has undergone a number of changes. First, the various nameswere consolidated into one: P6. Oracle also spent considerable resources improvingand adding to the product. For example, P6 now supports a standards-compliant WebServices API; it can run from a cluster of WebLogic or WebSphere application servers;and the full capabilities of the system are now available through a web browser.P3 and SureTrakSome users may confuse P3 and SureTrak with P6. P3 is the heir to the originalPrimavera Project Planner product. It is a standalone desktop application. SureTrakwas a lighter version of P3 designed for users with simpler requirements, andso had a limit on the number of activities it would support. Both products havereached the end of their life cycles, and sales of P3 and SureTrak officially endedon December 31st, 2010.Yet this is not the end of the standalone desktop client. With P6 version 8.1, atrue standalone version of P6 was created, finally closing the gap that sprangopen in 1999 when Primavera bought Eagle Ray, and set separate tracks for itsdesktop and enterprise solutions. Now users

Her specialties are Primavera P6 EPPM and Primavera P6 Professional. I would like to thank Joel Goveya for being such a cooperative and an understanding project coordinator. Robert W. Self, PMP has over 20 years experience in training, implementation and use of Primavera products with expertise in Primavera Project Manager (P6),