When to Upgrade your P6 EPPM installation

Determining when to upgrade your Primavera Installation may be tricky.  This article will attempt to help in this decision process to ensure your team is on the leading edge, but not necessarily the bleeding edge of Primavera.  The goal of this article is not to provide a set timeline or cycle of how often an upgrade should occur as the title implies, but instead the goal is to help provide guidelines on how you can best determine that for your environment.

First, off let us define what we mean when we say “upgrade”.  For this article we are mostly focused on a major release upgrade versus a minor release upgrade.  Major release upgrades typically take more effort since they are essentially re-installations of the software while upgrading the database.  Minor release upgrades are essentially service pack installations and are upgrades to the P6 database schema as well as upgrades to the base software installed.  Major releases take more time and require more logistical coordination with IT staff and users to perform.  While minor releases could be done much more easily.

For Example:

Now that we’ve setup the ground-rules for the article let’s get into the meat of it.  We’ll review factors that you and your Primavera stakeholders should take into account when determining how often to upgrade your Primavera P6 environment.

Factors to consider:

• Support End of Life
• Downtime of Primavera P6
• New Features of potential upgrade
• Bugs
• Oracle Security Risk update
• External Requirements
• Integrations
• Current IT Infrastructure (Windows Server upgrade on all servers from 2016 to 2019)

Support End of Life

The typical term for support life with Oracle products seems to be 5 years.  Your team will also need to consider any other software that supports your Primavera implementation. (ex. Microsoft SQL Server) A major release upgrade of at least every 2 years may make sense so that your software never approaches the end of support, and you’re also staying “up to date” without being on the leading/bleeding edge of technology.  Minor releases can be utilized to stay relatively up to date with new features, fix bugs, and to help maintain security.

Downtime of Primavera P6

Downtime can be easily managed on both minor and major upgrades by have a good plan for upgrade.  Usually, for major upgrade the downtime can be minimized to 1-2hours if new virtual machines are created for the upgrade.  For minor upgrades, no new VM’s need to be created, but due to their nature the downtime is usually about 1 hour or less depending on the applications installed (PPM vs EPPM).

New Features of potential upgrade

Key Primavera P6 stakeholders should review new features of upgrades in a consistent manner in order to determine that new features can provide more functionality or better performance while using Primavera P6.  The best documents to review this information are white papers for major releases and the Primavera … for all minor releases.

Bugs

Sometimes referred to as Oracle Primavera “features”, bugs can be annoying errors that are regularly encountered by users.  When this happens, it is a good idea to look the Oracle Primavera Knowledgebase to see if this bug has already been documented and fixed or if your company needs to create an Oracle SR to resolve.  Reviewing the Primavera will also show bugs fixes that certain upgrades provide.  Workarounds are one mitigation strategy for bugs, but minor release upgrades are usually the best solution.

Oracle Security Risk Update

Oracle produces a security risk update each quarter.  Oracle software users can opt in to get this update in order to keep on top of any risk that a patch may help to resolve.  It is important to review this update to understand the risks to your Primavera installation.  Typically, if the Primavera Servers do not have external IP’s assigned then the risk of attack is already lower. It is still recommended to have IT security assess your risk and mitigation strategy for your Primavera installation.

External Requirements

Contract requirements may define a specific version of Primavera required to use when submitting schedules.  Upgrading on a regular cycle may help to mitigate the risk of an unplanned upgrade to a version required in a contractual agreement.

Integrations

If your Primavera P6 installation is integrated with other products, then there may be some dependencies on specific version when either software is upgraded.  Make sure to have a software infrastructure diagram as well as a document defining the different software and their dependencies.  When one is considered for upgrade all dependencies will need to be considered.

Current IT Infrastructure

When it is time to update the server operating system it may also be a great time to perform an application upgrade.  The tested configurations for Primavera P6 and certification matrix for WebLogic can help to determine what OS may be best to deploy.

Next steps to take to help decide your software update frequency

• Track New Features and Oracle Risks
• Determine upgrade cycle right for your company
• Determine a budget for software upgrades
• Determine the key Features of the software and whether it improves or inhibits those features in the upgrade

If you’re ready to upgrade now and would like to get the ball rolling, please fill out our P6 Upgrade Help Request and we’ll be in touch.