Steps Involved in Operation of Primavera P6 EPPM

Creating an ideal schedule

The first step is to collect all the data and summarize it together in order to undertake schedule preparation.

Enterprise Project Structure (EPS)

Create a new structure of the company with the branches which is undertaking the execution of the project.

Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS)

After the generation of EPS, OBS is created which directly reflects the persons responsible for the respective project carried out in in the enterprise. All the new and upcoming projects related to the person are directly added under the same OBS.

Assigning Calendar

As per the requirement of the work, a suitable calendar is generated and assigned in the OBS. Specific working hours are determined and the breaks are allotted as specified.

Create a New Project

A new project is created in the respective division of the EPS and is respectively assigned to the person under the OBS. Expected start and finish dates may be given and assigned a calendar which can be global, resource or project oriented.

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

WBS is a hierarchy of the total work that must be accomplished to undertake completion of the project. Each project. Each WBS contains different activities associated with it.

Define Activities under WBS

Activities are the fundamental elements of a project and from the lowest level of a WBS as well as the smallest subdivision of a project. An activity is associated with characteristics such as activity ID, activity name, start and finish dates of the activity, activity calendar, activity type and codes as well as constrains, expenses, successor and predecessor relationships, resources, roles etc. associated with the activity.

Determination of Activity Duration

While planning is undertaken, the duration of every activity is entered in the original duration field. It could be in days, weeks or months. The actual duration can only be entered for those activities, which are completed.

Activity Dates

The activity dates available in Primavera P6 for various activities can be categorized as follows;  Actual Start.  Actual Finish.  Planned Start.  Planned Finish.

Activity Relationship

All the activities must be inter-connected to each other to for a structured work flow. This is achieved by assigning relationships i.e. successors and/or predecessors to every activity. The relationships may further be defined under the following categories,  Start to Start (SS) Relationship.  Start to Finish (SF) Relationship.  Finish to Start (FS) Relationship.  Finish to Finish (FF) Relationship.

Run Schedule

After defining all activities, assigning duration and relationships to them, the project activities are scheduled and the grant chart is obtained along with the network diagram of the project.

Resource and Role Allocation

Different roles of people working in the project can be created and different resources can be assigned to the created roles. The resources are specified certain value per unit and allotted maximum units. These resources fall under the category of labour, non-labour and material.

Activity cost

The cost of all the activities obtained after resource allocation is summoned up as the overall activity cost.

Baseline creation

A baseline plan is a perfect copy of the original schedule which provides a target against which a project’s performance is tracked and the project activities are updated as per their performance.

Updating the Schedule

If the project is progressing exactly as planned, updating may not be necessary. However, if the project falls behind and many activities undergo out of sequence or actual resource usage exceeds the planed usage, then the activities must be updated to enable on-time completion of the project. Activities may be updated as per their completion percentage, existing lags or leads and the project may be rescheduled as necessary after a given span of time.

Tracking

The tracking window is used for monitoring a project’s progress by using different layouts such as labour costs, project cost, resource forecasting as well as resource allocation both unit wise and cost wise.

Earned value

Primavera P6 allows the manager to track the project performance in terms of Earned value is a technique for measuring project performance according to both, project cost and schedule. This technique compares the planned budgeted cost of the project to the actual cost and obtains the following essential parameters, Planned Value, Actual Cost, Earned Value, Budgeted at Completion, Cost Variance, Schedule Variance and Performance Indexes.

Claim digger

The claim digger is a schedule analysis tool which enables any company to create a report that undertakes comparison of the selected data fields in a revised project for the corresponding baseline of the project.

Project issues

Project Issues are known problems within a project plan that require attention or corrective action. Issues can either be manually created or automatically generated. Issues can also be associated with Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements, activities or resources.

Project thresholds

Thresholds are created by selecting a parameter, such as start date and setting end values for the threshold. They can be applied to a specific element of WBS or an activity of the project plan. Project thresholds are helpful in monitoring the projects and create issues.

Risk Analysis

Project risk demonstrates uncertainty to any event or condition and may has both positive as well as negative effects on the objectives of the project such as its scope, quality, schedule and cost. The risks are termed as opportunities and threats. The project may be accepted if the risk value is under the threshold value as specified. Positive risks may also be undertaken with threshold limits to create enhanced values.

Report Generation and Portfolio access

Finally, the project report can be generated indicating all applicable parameters as required and the ultimate summary of the project can be viewed in the portfolio section.

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