Book Image

Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management

Book Image

Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management

Overview of this book

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: 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: 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.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 7. Scheduling and Constraints

P6 is not just a way to enter sets of tasks into a pretty chart. Behind P6 is the scheduling engine and a set of algorithms which use a combination of project data and application settings to generate a schedule. The scheduling algorithms used are based on the Critical Path Method (CPM), a well-established technique for project scheduling that has a depth and history well beyond the scope of this book. CPM scheduling, simply put, is a method designed to answer two questions:

  • When is the soonest I can deliver results based on my current estimates?

  • On which items should I focus in order to deliver on a desired date?

In this chapter, we will cover:

  • Scheduling activities

  • Understanding scheduling algorithms

  • Settings at the user level

  • Settings at the project level

  • Settings at the global level

  • Settings at the activity level