6 Must Have Books for Primavera P6 Users or Administrators

Dear Primavera P6 Professional user, P6 EPPM user, and Administrator,

I have something special for you that will hopefully rock your week.

Let me start by saying that Oracle Primavera software is becoming more and more complex with every release. Primavera P6 Professional has a few modules that come packaged with it now. I’m thinking P6 Visualizer and some backend java jobs to run Update Baselines and such. The software used to be simply one executable, but it has grown.

Primavera P6 EPPM especially follows that rule. Over the past 6 years we’ve seen it go from a java app running on open-source Tomcat to a fully integrated project management system that runs on beefy WebLogic and integrates with other Oracle software out of the box.

For example, the company that implements Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management could also implement the following Oracle packages to enhance and extend P6:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher for reporting
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for way more reporting
• Oracle Business Process Management to add workflow capabilities to P6 that trigger events in other Oracle systems (like Oracle eBusiness Suite)
• Oracle Primavera Contract Management to manage contractual documents and submittals
• Oracle Universal Content Management to add the ability to manage all project documentation (and more)

These are optional components, but that doesn’t mean that Oracle isn’t encouraging an enterprise to stand them up. Many organizations are adopting these tools as part of their project management suite.

Gone are the days of simple systems where an administrator needed to be savvy in a single system. Now users and administrators need to be educated on how to use these integrated systems as well.

But let’s come back to how I’m rocking your week.

Packt Publishing is a online and traditional publisher that has great coverage of Oracle products (and much much more of course). One of the things I like best about Packt is that all of their books are available in ebook or print format and you usually pay less for the ebook version.

Below I’ve listed my 6 top book picks for Primavera P6 users or Administrators.

The Books:

Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management

Written by my good friend Daniel Williams and fellow OPSIG board member Elaine Krazer, this book provides a great overview of all the intricacies of Primavera P6 EPPM and P6 Professional version 8. Read my book review here. A definite must have for P6 beginners.

Get it on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/1RoyMMt

Oracle Primavera Contract Management, Business Intelligence Publisher Edition v14

Written by another fellow OPSIG board member Stephen Kelly, this book provides a comprehensive look into managing project contracts with Oracle’s Contract Management v14.
Read my book review of this one here.

Get it on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/20ngfGy

Excel 2013 Dashboard Design [Videos]

I know you’re going to like this. It’s not a book – it’s a video eCourse on using Excel for Dashboard Design. Now you can finally build that super-amazing dashboard in Excel from P6 data! Who hasn’t tried to that yet?

Get it  on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/1Oiy9q4

Oracle BI Publisher 11g: A Practical Guide to Enterprise Reporting

Anyone who has tried to get those P6 Analytics reports working in BI Publisher, this book is for you! Let’s get some background on how BI Publisher works so we can start crafting those P6 EPPM reports. I can’t wait to dig into this one myself.

Get it  on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/1GHCdxy

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial

Similar to the previous book, this one focuses on OBI Enterprise Edition which has some addition features over BI Publisher. This book also claims to be a hands-on tutorial. Can’t wait.

Get it  on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/1MsMxWn

Getting Started with Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 – A Hands-On Tutorial

For those of you who have gone the distance to get Oracle BPM working with Priamvera P6, this one’s for you. It’s some powerful software that can do wonders if you can understand how it works.

Get it  on Packt’s site here: http://bit.ly/1LLExSQ

They’ve got some great deals.

If you have questions – please use Packt’s Help and Support area.

So get reading and make yourself a total expert on Primavera P6, Contract Management and Oracle software! Now you have no excuses.