How to Manage Projects the Primavera P6 Way

 

How do you manage a project? Do you do things the old-school way? Like do you organize meetings where your key project staff carry pens, calculators, large sheets of paper, and then you do things manually? If you still manage projects like that, I’m afraid you could get bogged down by completion delays, inadequate materials, and even the lack of skilled personnel, because you’re not automating things, or shall I say you’re not using the appropriate software or systems (Considering that we now live in truly fast-paced and high-tech times!). Let’s look at how to manage projects the Primavera P6 way.

 

What’s the Primavera P6?

Before we discuss how to run things the Primavera P6 way, let’s first discuss what the oracle primavera P6 is exactly all about.  Well, the software is an enterprise project portfolio management software, which includes project management, scheduling, risk analysis, opportunity management, along with collaboration and control capabilities.

 

The oracle primavera P6 integrates with other enterprise software like Oracle and SAP’s ERP systems. More and more organizations and companies who run large-scale projects today increasingly turn to the Primavera P6 for their project management and planning tool.

 

Many project managers are also realizing that the oracle primavera can open up new insights and perspectives into whether their projects are delivering, and what they’re supposed to do if it’s not.

 

Choose Your Users Carefully, and Train Them

So how do you get the most out of the oracle primavera P6, and avoid the pitfalls or stumbling blocks? Well, the first step would be to choose your users carefully, and train them.

 

Primavera P6 users need to know exactly what they are doing because if they do not, then it could be a recipe for chaos, or utter disaster. Yes, the truth is that the oracle primavera P6 is a reasonably complex tool, even if it’s highly configurable.

 

And, the software has many windows and layouts to master, and the schedules on the Primavera P6 are not stand-alone files that project teams can just tuck away and pull out when they need them.

 

Choose the Right Project Controllers

The next tip on how to manage projects effectively using the oracle primavera P6 would be to choose the right project controllers. To get a good return on your Primavera P6 investment, you will require a particular kind of highly-skilled project controllers.

 

While some project managers simply set baselines, report on progress by estimating the percentage left to complete each activity, very few go on to load resources and costs against tasks to really understand how their project is performing at any time, and how it will go on to perform.

 

Thus, using the oracle primavera P6 will call for a more rigorous, controlled and potentially more bureaucratic approach to managing projects, portfolios and programs. Whereas before, where project managers and their teams had very little room to move, which eventually obscured their reporting of real performance, the Primavera P6 helps to provide them with a clearer view of what’s truly happening.

 

So, whoever manages the project’s schedule will need to understand the oracle primavera P6 environment in depth, know what drives consistent reporting in their organization or company, and should have greater attention to detail.

 

When Planning, Look Wider Than IT

Implementing the oracle primavera is partly an IT challenge, because your network has to have enough capacity, and your desktop computers need to have adequate memory, and so on. But, with the Primavera P6 it’s a wider development challenge.

 

The oracle primavera P6 needs a lot of rigorous project control, and I’ve found out that it typically adds around 10% to a team’s workload as it beds in. Just how big those benefits are, and how long they will take to appear, will all depend on the early (and crucial) decisions that you and your project team will take about system set-up, processes and conventions.

 

You should also need to get everyone thinking the same way about governance. Like you will need to roll out the oracle primavera P6 with processes and training ready, if only to run things smoothly and prevent configuration option misunderstandings, or even total project chaos.