All good things must come to an end and the end is at hand for Primavera P3 and SureTrak two venerable products that were the tools that made sure projects from The Big Dig to millions of miles of roads and bridges were completed on-time and on-budget.  Contructech Magazine chimes in by stating:   “Oracle continues to bring to market new releases of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management—even announcing the latest release from Oracle OpenWorld last week. However, in the past few years, plans for both Primavera SureTrak and Primavera P3 have remained undefined.  Now, Oracle…

Read More

You read the bid specs for a highly desirable job and find out, that to be the successful bidder, the project schedule must be done in P6 and, on top of that, the schedule is to be resource loaded.  Your team is very proficient using Project as a scheduling tool but have never used P6.  It is important that your Construction Company gets this job…so you consider your options. Contract someone to create and manage the P6 schedule? (one time short term benefit with no option for an internal future P6 plan) Contract someone to create the P6 schedule,…

Read More

I’d like to introduce myself, My name is Don Monteleone, President of CBA  a 28 year veteran of Project & Portfolio Management.   You may have attended one of my Webinars, or my presentations at PMI, GovTech, or CIO Forums in the past. In any event, I have now been given a new forum for discussing all things PPM related. So, here goes: I am certain you are dealing with the ramifications of the current economic downturn and the resulting consequences. Everyone is. In times like these, it is critical to remember that good process is more…

Read More

P6 Project Collaboration Using Different Databases They won’t give you access to their Primavera P6 database, so how can you update status on your activities in your database and still preserve their information during the import? In the ideal world, all parties involved would work in the same database and program security would allow access to only the activities that each user needs or each sub could have their own project with just their activities that include relationship ties to other projects.  But the solution is not so straightforward when database access is not granted….

Read More

Given the choice, when a need arises in a project schedule for a summary level activity I always try to utilize WBS Summary activities over LOE”s.  Why is very simple….NO RELATIONSHIPS TO CREATE OR MAINTAIN.  Did you know that when you have an LOE that is Not Started and has an incorrect relationship with an underlying activity the Duration of the LOE, upon scheduling, reverts to zero, therefore, causing all Resource Budgeted Units assigned to the LOE to revert to zero!!  Did you also know that if you have an LOE that is In Progress and…

Read More

Almost since the inception of the invention of software itself M&A activity in the industry has been the norm not the exception. Great companies like Peoplesoft, Siebel, Mercury, Business Objects, and yes our very own Primavera have been gobbled up like plankton by the whales of the industry. IBM, Oracle, CA, Cisco, HP and Microsoft seemingly have an insatiable appetite for adding to their product portfolios. Once proud companies for which growth seemed to be unlimited are now adding profits to somebody elses’ bottom line. With the development of new technologies such as SaaS and Cloud Computing we will…

Read More

If you have ever attempted to bring together project Schedules from multiple groups into one cohesive Master Schedule then you understand what is meant by the term “Herding Cats”.