Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM; An Overview

Oracle Primavera’s P6 product is a high-end, sophisticated portfolio, project and resource management product capable of supporting large enterprises with thousands of project and users. Pinnacle has implemented P6 in some very large organizations. It's current version; Oracle Primavera P6 v8.4, was released in 2014.

The product was originally acquired with the purchase of Eagle Ray Software in 1999, and has been marketed under several names including Primavera Enterprise, Primavera TeamPlay, Primavera p3e, and Primavera P5.

At its core is a sophisticated Critical Path Method (CPM) based scheduling engine that professional schedulers will be comfortable with and that can handle the largest projects.

P6 has a number of different modules, including:

• Client/server based administration and high-end project scheduling
• Client/server based template management (referred to as methodology management) that allows you to store reusable subnets or pieces of common work or projects. You can then use these to construct plans for new projects. This can be configured to lead project managers through a series of questions that will be used to estimate the duration and effort involved in the project.
• Web based timesheets. This provides team members with a to-do list and collects effort expended and status against project activities.
• Web based module for project scheduling, timesheet approvals, collaboration and portfolio management. This module also has capabilities for locating and managing the allocation of resources across the organization.
• Enterprise reporting database. This supports “reporting friendly” data structures for third party reporting tools and allows the demands of reporting to be separated from the primary Primavera database.

P6 has a sophisticated technical architecture and will mesh well with your Enterprise architecture from a database, security, performance and reporting perspective. It has an API and other options for integration with security, Human Resources, Financial and other applications.

P6 also integrates with a number of cost engines for implementations that include, or are for, Earned Value Management.  This includes Primavera’s own EVMS cost engine called Primavera Cost Manager, Deltek Cobra and others.

The sophisticated CPM scheduler at the heart of P6 necessitates a learning curve for project managers who do not have a professional scheduling background. This learning curve can inhibit adoption of the tool if not taken into account.

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