A comprehensive guide to managing projects, resources, and portfolios using Primavera P6, through version 8.2.

• Get a detailed overview of Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management.
• Manage your projects from just anywhere using simple e-mail and the P6 iPhone app.
• Learn to create a new project in the P6 Professional Client
• Integrate Primavera P6 with three main ERP systems: Oracle EBS, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft.

In Detail

In 2008 Oracle acquired Primavera Software, Inc., a leading provider of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions for project-intensive industries.

Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management is an integrated project portfolio management (PPM) solution comprising role-specific functionality to satisfy each team member's needs, responsibilities, and skills. It provides a single solution for managing projects of any size, adapts to various levels of complexities within a project, and intelligently scales to meet the needs of various roles, functions, or skill levels in your organization and on your project team.

Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8.1: Project and Portfolio Management aims to show you all the features and functionality of the software thoroughly and clearly.

With Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8.1: Project and Portfolio Management, readers will master the core concepts of Primavera P6 and the new features associated with version 8.

This book is divided into two sections, in the first section we learn the fundamental concepts behind managing projects which include organizing projects, adding activities and relationships, assigning roles and resources, scheduling a project, and much more. In the second section we cover portfolio management and how to make the best use of the web client that includes working with portfolios, portfolio analysis, portfolio capacity planning, ROI, tracking performance, and lots more.

What you will learn from this book

• Learn the use of Constraints to tweak Activity dates to reflect the real world.
• Master the real-time reporting features of Project Dashboards
• Create Portfolio Scenarios to capture Portfolio data for comparisons and analysis
• Manage Portfolios and know how to create calculated UDFs to enhance them
• Get to grips with Primavera's calculated project-level User Defined Fields
• Organize your projects with EPS (Enterprise Project Structure), OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure), and WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)

Approach

This book is written in simple, easy to understand format with lots of screenshots and step-by-step explanations.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Project manager or a consultant, who wants to master the core concepts of Primavera P6 and the new features associated with version 8, then this is the best guide for you.

This book assumes that you have a fundamental knowledge of working in the Primavera P6 environment.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Oracle Primavera P6

Chapter 2: Getting Around: Understanding and Customizing the P6 Interface

Chapter 3: Organizing your Projects with EPS, OBS, and WBS

Chapter 4: Creating a New Project and Work Breakdown Structure

Chapter 5: Adding Activities and Relationships

Chapter 6: Resources

Chapter 7: Scheduling and Constraints

Chapter 8: Issues and Risks

Chapter 9: Baselines and Statusing

Chapter 10: Project Templates

Chapter 11 : Portfolios

Chapter 12: Portfolio Analysis

Chapter 13: Measuring and Scoring Projects

Chapter 14: Capacity Planning and ROI

Chapter 15: Dashboards

Chapter 16: Resource Management

Appendix A: Integrations

Appendix B: Reporting

About the Authors

Daniel LeRoy Williams leads the Integration Practice of Calance. This team works with diverse companies in engineering, construction, energy, and other asset-intensive industries, helping them to better measure, manage, and control project costs and schedules. The team specializes in implementing integrating construction financials with systems such as Procore, PmWeb, Primavera P6, MRI, Xero, CMIC, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards.

Daniel was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and raised in the small town of Clinton. He attended LSU (Geaux Tigers!) and obtained his PhD in Physics from the California Institute of Technology (Go Beavers?) in 1998.

Daniel speaks regularly at conferences such as Oracle OpenWorld, CPM Construction, JDE Partners Summit, and Collaborate. He is the founding Chairman of the Oracle Primavera Special Interest Group, which works to provide educational and networking opportunities to the Primavera community and to ensure that Primavera users have a unified discourse with Oracle.

He lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife Heather and their two children, Sean and Finn.

Elaine Krazer has run projects for most major industries and has served as coordinator, scheduler, master scheduler, trainer, Program Manager, Project Manager, P6 Administrator, P6 Certified Implementation Specialist and most other roles on a project. She has served on two Regional Project Management Institute boards as President and speaks on the topic world wide. Elaine currently serves on the Ultimate Escape (www.ultimateescape.org) board and is a founding board member and friend of Global Samaritan (www.globalsamaritan.org)and is a past board member of the Texas Rolls Royce Owners Club and remains a keen supporter. She is also currently the Primavera P6 Lead for the Oracle Primavera Users Group SIG. Previously she authored books used in her proprietary PMP Prep course which boasts a very high pass rate and customer satisfaction rate. Elaine has traveled the world and lived in Africa and the Middle East prior to moving to America. Elaine, her husband, son, and two girls live in Dallas with their two dogs.