Help Switching from Primavera 6 to MS Project 2007

[Doug]

Hello group,

I've been using Primavera for a couple of years, I'm no expert, but have
gotten used to the way P6 does things.

Me and a couple guys in my group are being asked to do a few relatively
small projects (not even worried about resources etc now, just schedule)

Is there a website or document that might spell out the things one needs to
know to move from Primavera to Project? I'm not talking about converting a
file, just understanding what things I should expect to be done differently
in Project than the way it was done in Primavera.

It seems that Project leans heavily on the relationships and can't except
that sometimes things don't start when they were supposed to. In the case of
updating status date past when an activity was supposed to start, it appears
Project thinks it's more likeley that we will travel back in time to start
the activity on time than it is that we'll start the activiy on or after the
status date.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

You're probably best served attending an MS Project training class.

I work with a bunch of ex-Primavera schedulers, and I can tell you that it's
entirely feasible to transition to Project. We ended up developing a couple
of macros to emulate how they expected the tool to work coming from a Primavera
background, but it wasn't a huge amount of effort.


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Doug]

Thanks Andrew

Maybe there's hope for me..

But it's the little things that can drive you crazy.

For example.. one of the things I actually like about Project is the way you
can indent and outdent to group activities into groups, and how I can add
blank rows to make the schedule more readable especially during the
development stage. Just now I filtered a schedule to hid ethe completed
activities by using the filter called "incomplete tasks". In addition to
hiding the completed tasks, this filter also hides every blank row and makes
my schedule very hard to read.

Arg!

Doug

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Doug,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I suggest you explore Format/Gridlines instead of blank rows.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials



Thanks Andrew

Maybe there's hope for me..

But it's the little things that can drive you crazy.

For example.. one of the things I actually like about Project is the way you
can indent and outdent to group activities into groups, and how I can add
blank rows to make the schedule more readable especially during the
development stage. Just now I filtered a schedule to hid ethe completed
activities by using the filter called "incomplete tasks". In addition to
hiding the completed tasks, this filter also hides every blank row and makes
my schedule very hard to read.

Arg!

Doug

 

[Sai]

Hello group,

I've been using Primavera for a couple of years, I'm no expert, but have
gotten used to the way P6 does things.

Me and a couple guys in my group are being asked to do a few relatively
small projects (not even worried about resources etc now, just schedule)

Is there a website or document that might spell out the things one needs to
know to move from Primavera to Project?  I'm not talking about converting a
file, just understanding what things I should expect to be done differently
in Project than the way it was done in Primavera.

It seems that Project leans heavily on the relationships and can't except
that sometimes things don't start when they were supposed to.  In the case of
updating status date past when an activity was supposed to start, it appears
Project thinks it's more likeley that we will travel back in time to start
the activity on time than it is that we'll start the activiy on or after the
status date.

Doug - Regarding your statement "In the case of updating status date
past when an activity was supposed to start", I would say it is
default behaviour of Project is to ignore the status date while
recoridng actuals.

But, you change the way Project behaves by following the below steps:

1. After the Status date is set in Project Information dialog box
2. Choose Tools | Options, Calculation tab and under Schedule
adjustments for early and late tasks section
3. You can turn on / off the below check boxes
a Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date
b Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date
and And move start of remaining parts back to status date
c Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to status
date
d Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to status
date And move end of completed parts forward to status date

Please let us if clears your question.

- Sai, PMP, PMI-SP, MCT, MCTS
http://saipower.wordpress.com

 

[Doug]

I thought I replied a few days ago, but it doesn't seem to have ever made it
here, so I'll try again.

Thanks for the responses. I can see how trying to use blank lines for
formatting could get to be a big problem, I will definatley stop doing that.

Luckily, the schedules I am being asked to do right now are very informal
and change drastically on a weekly basis. While that may not be the best way
to learn the right way of doing things in MSP, at least it allows me to poke
around in the program and see what things work for me and what things don't.

I actually took a intro MSP class a couple years ago, but don't remember
much from it and it really wasn't very in depth anyway.

I'll keep an eye on the posts in this group and maybe I'll learn some stuff
from those.

Dougb