P6 Analytics: What’s new in R3.1
Written on . By CPM Solutions
The latest version of P6 Analytics has two main key enhancements, that is, it now has a focus on “asset-intensive industries” and a new daily history that allows you to see project history day-to-day.
New Focus on Asset-Intensive Industries
What are “asset-intensive industries” anyhow? These are any businesses that run large assets, such as factories, that need to be up and running continuously, smoothly, and safely because any down-time or accidents could be costly, either legally, environmentally, or financially. P6 Analytics helps these types of businesses reduce their downtime by addressing quickly developing trends and risks that would otherwise be harmful if undetected.
P6 Analytics divides activities for asset-intensive industries into two groups: Shutdown/Turnaround/Outage and Routine/On-Line Maintenance.
Shutdown/Turnaround/Outage (STO)
P6 Analytics benefits STO by providing graphical views of project performance overall as well as snapshots of day-to-day activities. Project managers can quickly see trends of emergent work that is surfacing while the project is ongoing so they can find out why it is happening and take care of it quickly. By keeping track of progress being made, P6 Analytics allows you to evaluate whether or not your project will be finishing on time. If you are delayed, you can drill-down to the details as to where you need to fix the issues.
Routine/On-Line Maintenance
P6 Analytics 3.1 gives users the advantage of tracking your future plans so that you can execute your project plan flawlessly. You can also watch the schedule as it is being executed to ensure that the project is being completed as planned. After a workweek is completed, you can use “T+1 critique” to look back and determine how well you planned the activities as well as how well they were completed. You can determine if they were late, ahead of schedule, over- or under-budgeted, and how well their resources were assigned and utilized.
P6 Project Configuration
Since you have the option of choosing metrics for either STO or routine maintenance, P6 Analytics allows you to pre-set which projects are assigned to each of the metrics using pre-defined User Defined Fields (UDFs). For STO projects, you can determine the outage start date so that you can plan for pre-outage tasks within the project plan. For routine/on-line maintenance projects, you can set weekly intervals for updates and determine the start day of the week (which is pre-set to Monday). Using P6 Project Configuration details, you can determine the day for your T-1 critique (by default will automatically occur 6 weeks prior).
Industry Samples Dashboards
Because of this new focus in asset-intensive industries, P6 Analytics comes with a brand new Industry Samples Dashboard. Analytics comes with over 100 new dashboards that are customized for STO and routine/on-line maintenance.
The STO analyses includes daily burn downs, scheduling analysis and other performance analysis. Such graphs could be like the “Average vs. Baseline (Hours) Analysis” that displays two separate graphs, one showing the basline hours compared to the actual hours and the second showing the baseline and actual daily hours with the baseline average and actual average hours. These types of graphs can help you visualize if your project is keeping to the hours allotted or if they are going over time.
The Routine/On-Line Maintenance analyses includes work planning look ahead, T+1 analysis, and daily or weekly scheduling analysis. An analysis could be, for example, the “Schedule Compliance Analysis” that shows if the project is progressing as planned for a selected week.
These Industry Samples are fully customizable and are completely interactive so you can dig deeper for the data you want.
Daily History
If you want to see how your project is performing day-to-day then P6 Analytics is for you. P6 Analytics 3.1 now enables you to see trending in Activity and Resource Assignment history. From this you can answer questions such as, “Are there new activities being created?” or “Are we using our resources to the best of their capabilities?” Daily history is pre-programmed into your P6 Analytics, so there is no additional setup required.
Slowly Changing Dimensions
Knowing the slightest change in your project is crucial, especially when it is a Shutdown, Turnaround, or Outage. That is why P6 Analytics captures changes such as activity names, start dates, and code values. If there is a change in an activity start date, P6 Analytics shows you the effective changes in all the predecessor dates and can elaborate by allowing you to compare prior to current activity dates. If you are finding that a particular activity is being delayed, you can click on it to find out why. This is just another reason why P6 Analytics is useful and can help you truly understand your project.
Additional Enhancements
P6 Analytics 3.1 has a few more enhancements from the previous version, including:
Catalog Updates
In the already existing dashboards, P6 Analytics 3.1 provides new views, reformatted dashboard pages, and updated analysis relevant to today’s projects. This updated catalog also includes more Additional Samples that are separate from the Industry Samples to provide you with more ideas and analyses templates.
New Subject Areas
P6 Analytics 3.1 now has new subject areas for you to organize your data. These include:
- Activity history
- Resource assignment history
- Resource assignment user-defined fields (UDFs)
- Resource UDFs
- Burn down
- Work planning
ETL Enhancement and Code Hierarchies
An ETL (Extraction, Transformation, and Loading) enhancement in P6 Analytics allows your System Administrator to edit you ETL calculations with your own metrics. This means you can now customize counts and calculations within the metadata.
Values for Global Projects, Activities and Resource codes are now available in P6 Analytics. The OBI hierarchy allows you to expand and collapse the code values as well as see the full path down to the bottom level of codes.
In Summary
Stakeholders, from clients and high-level executives to project managers, will find P6 Analytics useful when evaluating projects and portfolios. P6 Analytics is a tool you should be using to keep projects on track and within budget while utilizing your resources effectively.