This week we’re starting a new Discussion feature on PlannerTuts. Each week we’ll be kicking off a discussion that is insightful or particularly helpful in the day-to-day world of project controls. Share your opinion, add your thoughts to these debates.
We all have smartphones and there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there. But are we ready to update our project schedules through an app or not?
Primavera released an iPhone app about a year ago with little or no fanfare. P6 TeamMember (iOS only) is freely available in iTunes. But it’s not exactly plug-and-play as there’s a lot of background infrastructure that needs to be in place at your company before you can use it – including an install of Primavera P6 EPPM (yes, the web-version of Primavera). We don’t have a sense for how many folks are using it.
We all probably dream of being able to whip out our phones in a meeting, and update our project schedules on the fly with progress. How about doing the same thing while walking a site in the field? The convenience factor is high.
But would a Primavera mobile app help or hinder the project update process? Any mobile app developed will not deliver the full functionality of P6 – Gantt Chart, Resource Usage charts, access to all project activity information and features like scheduling will likely not be available in a smartphone app. So does an App with limited functionality buy you any time-savings at all? Or are you better off in front of P6 to do your updates?
Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
I think we can just develop an app giving some procedures of primavera.Thats all and working in phone is immossible,
Personally, being able to update in the field with activities that should be or are in progress would be quite useful. Processing would still need to be done in the office.
Thanks M. and Damian! I’d like to see updates submitted through an app, then reviewed and approved but the scheduler.
I guess we all have little faith that someone could build an app with all of the power of primavera built-in.
master Michael
greeting
thanks for great tips & explanation…but I have question of another topic… my question about tool (check in , check out) in Primavera P6 R 8.2 or P6 R 7.x …what is uses & applications of this is tool & how can we use the is tool to our projects or our schedules… pleas answer me … sorry for my insist
@Zeinco, yes you are persistent. 😉
Check-in / Check-out is used when you are planning to work on a schedule but are not connected to the P6 database. Let’s say you are going to a remote site and want to update the schedule. First, you check the schedule out – this locks it so other users can’t make changes while you are gone – you would export the schedule and import it to a local db. When you return, you would check the schedule in and import the updated schedule back to your enterprise db.
Hope that helps,
Michael
thanks very much master Michael
Conceptually, I think it makes a lot of sense, especially if tablets (Nexus 7) were included in the input mix and Excel was the input platform. For the PE, Superintendent, Foreman to make real-time updates to their activity list without any intermediate transfer steps would seem to be a real time saver. Whether this should be directly to P6 or Excel, I am without any experience. Since I am a believer in “Soft Logic”, where most commodity installation is monitored via Excel, any progress of spools, pieces, instruments, etc. would seem to be ‘child’s play’ via Google Drive (or similar). I probably would resist direct access to P6.
Any ‘real-life’ experiences would be most interesting.
Hi Michael,
I have been thinking about that myself. One simple feature that I think would be useful, is the ability for members of the project team to look at a version of the schedule that interactively shows the linking.
I schedule design tasks with fairly soft logic and the links are not always obvious to all the project stake holders. The ability for individual review that allows people to “look under the hood” would be useful.
I generally find that updates are best done with a group discussion. The discussion is the most important part of the process.