Decipher The Disaster

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12 Tactics to Analyze

A Primavera P6

Schedule You’ve

Just Inherited

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Table of Contents Is this Guide right for me? 2

A Cruel Inheritance… 4

A Long, Long Time Ago… 5

The Plan 7

Scope: Schedule Mechanics 8

Preparation 9

Download and Import Layouts 10

Tactic 1: Review ALL Documentation 11

Tactic 2: See the Big Picture – 12

Dates, Durations and Deadlines 12

Tactic 3: Do a Walk Through 14

Tactic 4: Assess Your Project’s Size 15

Tactic 5: Unravel Your Schedule’s Work Breakdown Structure 16

Tactic 6: Tallying Activity Types 19

Tactic 7: Check Project Calendars 20

Tactic 8: Measure Your Milestones 21

Tactic 9: Fix Open-Ended Relationships 22

Tactic 10: Learn about Leads & Lags 23

Tactic 11: Check Constraints 24

Tactic 13: Out of Sequence Activities 25

Next Steps 26

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Is this Guide right for me? Not quite sure if this Guide is right for you? Check the Primavera user levels below to see if

your level matches the level of book you are about to read:

Beginner Beginners are new to using Primavera P6 and are still learning the basics.

They may have completed some formal Primavera P6 training but have limited

experience using the tool to plan and manage real world projects.

Intermediate Intermediate users have been using Primavera P6 for some time and may have

completed a classroom course or formal training. They have experience

planning and updating projects in Primavera P6 and are comfortable with some

advanced features as well.

Advanced Advanced users are competent and experienced with most aspects of

Primavera P6. They have likely completed some formal training on Primavera

P6 and have much experience using the tool on real-world projects. They are

also familiar with many advanced features of Primavera P6.

This Guide is appropriate for the following project management roles:

This ebook!

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Decipher the Disaster

Curated by Michael Lepage

Michael Lepage is a Primavera trainer

and consultant. He is also an editor and

author at the Planner Tutorials Hub. He

has lead implementations of Primavera

for companies large and small. He really

enjoys writing and teaching and flying

remote control helicopters.

Follow me on Twitter @PlannerTuts

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A Cruel Inheritance… It happens. You become the new owner of a project schedule that is monstrous, complex and

undecipherable. WHO put it together and WHAT were they thinking?

Activities: 8,200 by last count ….and growing

WBS: 10 levels deep

Resources: no naming convention to speak of

Costs: $Millions$ on the Cost Curve

Relationships: serious gaps

…and we haven’t even looked at any dates yet.

The boss wants to discuss key milestones with you this afternoon! Go!

This situation happens every day in our project-driven economy. Planners come and go for

many reasons and what is left behind is the fruit of their labours – a schedule. Whether that

schedule is good or bad is up to its new owner (YOU) to decide.

In some situations, you may be able to discuss the schedule with whoever developed it. Then

hopefully you’ll have a proper transition and get up to speed fast with their help. In other

situations, the person who created the schedule is gone and not coming back.

This guide is for the situation where there is no project plan handoff.

Truly understanding someone else’s work and rationale for planning and developing it a certain

way is a big task. There is no silver bullet solution to this inheritance dilemma. But there are

some proven Tactics you can use. Read on.

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A Long, Long Time Ago…

A long, long time ago: Project schedules were simpler. I don’t mean that projects were easier or simpler to

accomplish. But we didn’t have the sophisticated tools that store terabytes of project data in a

project schedule. Schedules used to incorporate less data, were easier to create, manage,

update and understand.

Today: There are no limits on data. A 5,000-line project schedule has become the norm. Schedules

are required to accommodate large scope, hundreds of resources, multiple estimates, store

key scenarios and schedule work packages by 15-minute intervals. Today, projects often track

to numerous baselines and get updates coming from a dozen contractors. Clients require that

every detail is estimated, documented, reviewed, approved, updated, tracked and

statused….weekly.

Planners and Schedulers need to know their project schedules intimately. A planner must

master all of that data. Their teams rely on them to set the pace and track performance,

forecast problems, highlight risks and manage the mountain of project data.

We all know….

if you don’t have a handle on your schedule, you’re in trouble.

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In the popular book and movie “The DaVinci Code”, Robert Langdon is faced

with solving a murder in the Louvre. The victim is found in the Grand Gallery,

naked and posed like DaVinci famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a

cryptic message written beside his body and a pentacle drawn on his chest in

his own blood.

When asked by an official why the body was laid out so cryptically, Langdon

replies…

“Captain Fache, obviously I can’t tell you why.”

When we open up a project we haven’t ever set our eyes on and try to grasp the meaning

behind the data, it can feel like we’re trying to crack DaVinci’s code.

Ironically, what we need to get our bearings is a PLAN.

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The Plan If you’ve recently inherited or become the owner of an Oracle Primavera P6 schedule that

need deciphering, then this guide is for you.

Primavera P6 is a great tool for building complex project schedules. It’s also a great tool for

analyzing complex project schedules. Many features in Primavera can be used to help

decipher your project schedule. Then you can determine if your schedule is a disaster or not.

This guide will walk you through a process to help you reveal how your plan was built. During

this process we’ll also answer the key question:

“Was this project schedule built well?”

Big Picture FIRST To get a handle on your new schedule, you need to focus on the big

picture first. Understanding the context for the project is as important as

understanding the details. Start with our Big Picture Tactics.

Scrutinize the Details Once we have a firm footing, then we can use Primavera’s features to

help us focus on specific scheduling details. We’ll show you specific

Tactics to use and steps to take to decipher your schedule.

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Scope: Schedule Mechanics This guide is geared to helping you get your head around

your project with a focus on the schedule mechanics of

your project. We will not cover any topics on resourcing,

resource assignments, leveling, costs or cost-loading.

We’ll focus rather on the true foundation of your schedule

which addresses how it was built and organized, how it

was linked together, and how it was scheduled.

The Resource management and Cost management aspects of a schedule are also important

and we may address them in a future publication.

So if you’re ready, let’s begin!

Schedule

Resources $$

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

John D. Rockefeller

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Preparation

Create a Working Copy of Your Schedule Before you begin deciphering your schedule, you’ll want to preserve the original – in case you

ever have to go back.

Step 1: Make a Copy We recommend you create a copy of your schedule and re-name the copy

something appropriate, perhaps appending today’s date to the name. This

will preserve the original you were handed. With a working copy and the

original still in the database, you’ll be prepared for anything.

Step 2: Just Schedule It! Open the working copy of your project plan and reschedule it. This will

make sure it’s been updated and scheduled in case it hadn’t been done in

a while. Rescheduling will also update many calculated fields and the

Schedule Log file which we’ll use later on. Don’t worry, it’s only a copy.

You can always restore it to the original schedule.

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Download and Import Layouts In order to make deciphering your schedule an easier process, we’ve created some very useful Primavera P6 Activity Layouts for you to use alongside this guide. We’ll reference a layout for each Tactic we present. We’ve even got a tutorial on how to import / install them.

We recommend you download and install the layouts into your Primavera P6 user account before you get deep into analyzing your project. Here’s how:

Installing the Activity Layouts 1) Goto http://www.plannertuts.com/decipher-activity-layouts to download the Primavera

Activity layouts.

2) Read this tutorial to for instructions on how to import / install Activity layouts in P6: http://www.plannertuts.com/tutorials/importing-exporting-emailing-layouts-in-oracle-primavera-p5-p6-134/

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Tactic 1: Review ALL Documentation Do you get everything you need? Ask for ALL supporting documentation before you try to

unravel this schedule. Here’s a checklist:

Request the Project Charter Ask for the approved Work Estimate

Ask for any Scoping docs

Ask for any relevant Drawings

Request all Specification documents

Get and read any relevant Contractual documents

Is there a Document Repository on a file share somewhere these and other

documents might be located? Find out and start getting up to speed.

Speed Reading 101 Once you are armed with as much documentation as is

relevant to your task and the project, it’s time to speed read.

Do this:

1. Get a stack of Post-it-Notes.

2. Scan & Tag : Go through each document, briefly

scanning each section. Put a Post-it-Note on any

page that may be an input to the project schedule.

3. Get rid of documents that were not relevant – this should leave you with a short list of

10-15 important pages.

4. Spend some time reviewing the 10-15 important pages in detail.

The steps outlined above are an easy way to remove that feeling of overwhelm that shows up

when faced with…..well, reviewing a monster stack of documents. The goal is to find what’s

important and get out. You could easily spend many days reviewing and trying to understand

project documentation. Just get what’s important and move on.

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Tactic 2: See the Big Picture – Dates, Durations and Deadlines To see the big picture you’ll need to gather some high-

level information about your project. That means

understanding where the project sits in terms of execution

and progress. Here’s how:

4 Key Dates To begin, there are 4 key project dates you should be

concerned with:

• Planned Finish Date

• Planned Start Date

• Data Date

• Must Finish By Date – the project’s Deadline

Find them and jot them down on a piece of paper. Now go through the following analysis of

these dates.

What to look for Essentially, you want to ensure these dates line up properly with each other. For example:

ensure the Date Date is within the bounds of the Planned Start and Finish Dates. Here are

some specific items to check in.

Project Start Date Do a quick check to make sure the schedule reflects the proper Start Date from the

project specification. Check this on the Projects screen, using the Dates tab.

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Must Finish By date / Planned Finish If there is a Must Finish By Date set, then someone has a project deadline in mind. If

there’s no deadline set, then you may need to ask “why or why not?” Is this an error or

is it intentional? Better find out.

Is the project set to finish before the Deadline? This is the first gauge to see how much

hot water you are in. If the Planned Finish Date falls after the Must Finish By Date, then

one of your first tasks in owning this schedule should be to help plan the work to finish

before the deadline.

If the Planned Finish Date falls before the Must Finish By Date, then it’s a better

situation, but by how much? It’s important to know how much time there is until a

project becomes late.

The Data Date Notice the project’s Data Date. It should be an indicator of when the project was last

updated with status information or actuals.

If the Data Date matches the Planned Start Date - this is an indicator that your project is

still in the planning or acceptance stage. No actuals have been should have been set in

the schedule.

If the Data Date exceeds the Planned Start Date, then you schedule should have been

progressed as well.

The Data Date should usually not exceed today’s date.

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Tactic 3: Do a Walk Through The best way to understand your current schedule is to do a

walkthrough. Request some time with your project’s project

manager or someone who understands the schedule to do this.

Walk through the schedule line by line to understand the

schedule mechanics. This is not the time to fix things, but

rather to make notes and to help you get a good feel for the

project, its goals, key dates, impacts, progress, etc. Bring a

notebook.

Here are some potential questions or areas to focus on:

What to ask and what to look for: - What was working well with the previous scheduler? What was not working well?

- What reporting or statusing processes should you know about? Other processes?

- Does the schedule have known gaps? Is it missing scope?

- What areas of the schedule should you focus on addressing first?

- Does the schedule represent accurate progress in the field? Is it up to date?

- What impacts do you foresee that will affect the schedule?

We’re sure you will come up with more questions, but those listed above should give you some

ideas to be prepared for a Walkthrough of your new schedule.

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Tactic 4: Assess Your Project’s Size Understanding how big a project plan is can be helpful in understanding a project’s scope and

structure. Primavera has some built-in fields to show you exactly how many activities are in

your project plan.

We’ll focus on 2 components relating to the size of a project:

1) What is the overall duration of the project?

2) How many activities make up the schedule?

In Primavera 1. Open the “Project Sizing”

Layout.

2. Note the project’s duration.

3. Note the total number of

activities for the project and

for each phase or WBS.

What to look for a) How long is the schedule in days?

b) Could it be better divided into multiple schedules?

c) How many activities make up the schedule?

d) Are there enough activities to represent the duration of the project? (i.e.: is there

enough detail?)

e) Are there too many activities? (i.e.: is there too much detail?) Overly large schedules

are hard to update, change and manage. Can you combine or merge activities or use

steps to remove unnecessary activities?

z

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Tactic 5: Unravel Your Schedule’s Work Breakdown Structure A Work Breakdown Structure is the fundamental organizing structure of a project schedule. If

your project doesn`t have one, then it might be flawed from the start.

“A WBS provides a common framework for the natural development of the

overall planning and control of a project and is the basis for dividing work into

definable increments from which the statement of work can be developed

and technical, schedule, cost, and labor hour reporting can be established.”

Wikipedia

Essentially, you want the answer to: Is this project well organized?

A well-organized project is the product of a well-organized planner / scheduler. If it’s well

organized, it’s going to be much easier to decipher and easy to understand.

In Primavera 1. Open the WBS – Summarized Layout.

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What to look for Many companies enforce a specific WBS structure that ensures consistency across projects.

Often this standard WBS will map to a CBS (Cost Breakdown Structure) to ensure the project’s

costs are accumulating in the right buckets. In some cases, the WBS in your project is the one

you’re stuck with – check with your project cost engineers to see if that’s the case.

In the case where your project’s WBS has been set by the planner, then it’s a good idea to

check the following:

WBS Levels Common Structure: Many WBS’s follow a structure that incrementally elaborate a project.

The idea is to organize the work in a meaningful and incremental fashion. A common structure

is shown here:

Level 0: Project Summary Level 1: Phase / System Level 2: Sub-System or Discipline Level 3: Work Package

Depth: We want to include enough depth in the WBS to capture all our project activities at a manageable level. However, going too deep will create a system that’s hard to follow.

0 Aircraft System

1 Air Vehicle

1.1 Airframe

1.1.1 Airframe

Integration 1.1.2

Fuselage 1.1.3 Wing

1.2 Propulsion

1.3 Vehicle Subsystems 1.4 Avionics

2 System Engineering

3 Program Management

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Three(3) to six(6) levels of depth is usually sufficient. Ten(10) levels is too deep.

Completeness The WBS should capture 100% of the project’s scope at every level. In decomposing the work from one level to the next, the sum of the work at the “child” level must equal 100% of the work represented by the “parent”. Essentially, this really means :

a) Do not add extra work that is NOT in-scope at any level b) Do not leave out any work that IS in-scope at any level

Check your project’s WBS for the items above.

The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.

Stephen Covey

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Tactic 6: Tallying Activity Types Checking to see what Activity Types are used on your project is another check to ensure good

scheduling practices were implemented. Depending on the size and type of your project,

expect Start and Finish Milestones and mostly Task Dependent activities. A few WBS

Summary activities are ok, as well as Level of Effort activities. Resource Dependent activities

tend to be rarely used unless there is a specific or particular circumstance.

In Primavera 1) Open the “Activity Types” layout

2) Analyze your activities.

What to look for 1) Is the majority of the project using the Task Dependent type?

2) Are there start and finish milestones in the project?

3) How are Level Of Effort activities used? Are they used appropriately?

4) How are WBS Summary activities used?

5) How are Resource Dependent activities used?

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Tactic 7: Check Project Calendars The Activity Calendars your project uses will affect how activities are scheduled and what

dates work will land on (or not land on). You’ll want to make sure that each activity has been

assigned an appropriate Calendar, and that each Calendar is configured properly.

In Primavera 1) Open the “Project Calendars” layout.

2) Note what Calendars your project is using.

3) Open each Calendar to ensure each is setup properly

What to look for 1) Is each Calendar setup properly? Does each

Calendar reflect accurate working / non-work times?

2) Does each Calendar include corporate or stat holidays as non-work time? Is that a

requirement of your project?

3) Are the Time Periods set accurately for your Calendars? (Edit your Calendar, click the

Time Periods button)

4) Are your project’s activities assigned an appropriate Calendar?

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Tactic 8: Measure Your Milestones According to PMI’s Practice Standard for Scheduling, a milestone “will represent the start or

completion of a portion or deliverable of the project and may also be associated with external

constraints, such as the delivery of specific required permissions or equipment. Each project

should have a start milestone and a finish milestone.”

Here’s how to check your project’s milestones.

In Primavera 1) Open the “Project Milestones” layout.

2) From the Activities screen, goto View -> Filters

3) Place a checkbox next to the “Milestone” filter, ensuring no other filters are checked on.

4) Analyze the project’s milestones and dates.

What to look for 1) Are there both start and finish milestones?

2) Is there both a project start & finish milestone?

3) Are the milestones to mark the beginning and

completion of each phase of the project?

4) Are there too many milestones? Not enough?

5) Are the milestones properly linked with

relationships?

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Tactic 9: Fix Open-Ended Relationships Good relationship linking is an essential part of a good schedule. A poorly-linked project

schedule can steal away endless amounts of time fixing activity order and dependencies.

With regard to your project’s activity network, one main concern is open-ended activities.

Open-ended Activities don’t land in the project’s Activity Network and can impact your project’s

Critical Path. Ideally, you have only 2 open-ended activities –the project’s Start and Finish

Milestones. Of course, that’s really ideal.

In Primavera 1) Open the “Open Ends” layout

The “Open Ends” layout filters out any WBS Summary activities and keeps only

activities that have no Successors or Predecessors (or both) listed.

2) Examine the list of Open-ended Activities in your project

What to Look For 1) Open-Ended activities other than the project’s Start or Finish milestone that should have

successors and predecessors assigned.

2) An Open-Ended activity cannot be on your Critical Path. Analyze open-ends and

determine proper linkages for those activities

3) Aim to eliminate open-ends on your schedule. (WBS Summaries should not be counted

as open-ends)

4) Aim to use primarily Finish-to-Start relationships in the project. Simplicity is key to a

good activity network.

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"There cannot be a stressful

crisis next week. My schedule

is already full."

Henry Kissinger

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Tactic 10: Lookout for Leads & Lags In keeping with Tactic 8’s theme of good relationship and network logic, you need to

understand if your project plan has any Relationship Leads or Lags. Relationship Lag or Lead

delays should be minimized or not used at all. Lag or Lead delays have poor visibility on

project schedules, are hard to find and hard to document. It’s highly recommended to remove

any lag or lead delays in your schedule. Lags can easily be replaced with an activity

describing and documenting the delay, offering good visibility.

Helpful Resources 1) Read our tutorial on building a P6 report to find lead or lag delays in your Primavera

schedule. Build a quick reusable report in P6 to ferret out lag or lead entries.

In Primavera 1) Build the lag report as outlined in the tutorial above.

2) Open your project and run the report.

What to Look For 1) If there are leads or lags, check activity Notebooks to see if there is any documentation

as to why they are being used.

2) Aim to remove lag entries and to replace them with real activities that represent and

describe the delay.

3) Aim to remove lead entries by revisiting each activity’s relationships and relationship

types.

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Tactic 11: Check Constraints Activity Constraints can get you into a lot of hot water! How? Well, essentially Constraints

override network logic and delay activities to start or finish on a user-specified date. Granted,

sometimes using a “Start on or After” constraint to delay an activity is necessary. But many

inexperienced schedulers use Constraints much too often or sometimes instead of using

Relationships…and without adding any documentation to the Activity. This becomes a major

mess for someone like you who has to figure out why an Activity’s dates were changed with a

Constraint.

Thus, you’ll need to check your project’s constraints and decipher them quick!

In Primavera 1) Open the “Activity Constraints” layout

2) Examine the list of Activities that have constraints in your project.

What to Look For 1) Look for any documentation in each constrained activity’s Notebook. If you’re lucky

you’ll soon know why a Constraint was added to a specific activity.

2) Check project documentation for reasons constraints are used on key activities.

3) Check for Mandatory Constraints. Mandatory Constraints are NOT recommended and

should be avoided as they override relationships and destroy a project’s fluidity.

Remove any Mandatory Constraints or replace them with a soft Constraint.

4) Remove any Constraints that you think are not necessary. The fewer Constraints in

your schedule, the easier it will be to update, change and manage. Keep the list of

constrained activities down to a dozen or less.

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Tactic 13: Out of Sequence Activities If your project has already been progressed, you may have

some Out of Sequence activities as a result. This situation

arises when activities are progressed, but not in the order that

they were planned. For example, work begins on an activity

prior to the completion of its predecessor activities. Although it

may be legitimate to execute activities out of order (as

determined by workers in the field), doing so can cause

problems in your schedule, affect the critical path and

downstream activities. A scheduler will need to be aware of when activities are executed out

of sequence and should adjust their schedule accordingly.

In Primavera 1) Schedule your project (unless you have already done so). Open the schedule log.

2) Check the Errors & Warnings listing for Out-of-Sequence Activities.

What to Look For 1) Find and analyze out of sequence activities using the schedule log and Gantt.

2) Understand the contractual details around execution of activities. Are there contractual

stipulations that limit or allow out of sequence execution on your project?

3) Adjust “Advanced Scheduling” options (F9 -> Options button). Set Primavera to

schedule progressed activities as “Retained Logic” (if activities must be progressed in

sequence) or as “Progress Override” (if activities can be progressed out of order).

4) Adjust activity relationships to re-sequence activities if appropriate. Update any

baselines to accommodate these changes as well.

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Next StepsProject planning and scheduling is like painting a picture. I believe it’s truly 80% science and

20% art. The tactics in this guide will help you with the science part. But it’s up to you to fill in

the gaps and use your design expertise to create (or re-create) a highly-organized and intuitive

project schedule.

Since the focus of this guide was schedule mechanics, you may also need to dig into the

following aspects of your schedule (if appropriate).

Critical Path and Total Float

Resource assignments

Find Resource over-allocations

Cost loading

Earned Value Management

If you haven’t done so, ensure you download the Activity Layouts that accompany this guide,

as outlined on page 10.

Helpful Tutorials Use A Level Of Effort To Add Work Stoppage Info To A Project and Still Track To Your

Primavera Baseline

Use Reflections in Primavera P6 to merge scenarios back into your project

[Video] Building a Stacked Histogram in Primavera P6

Quick Tip: Zoom! P6 Activities to Excel in 8 clicks!

Schedule % Complete in Oracle Primavera – The Missing Guide (Part 1)

Units Percent Complete in Primavera P6 – the Missing Guide

Using Primavera’s .Xer File Parser – Import WBS From Excel Without The SDK

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