Nectar #1 -Have Problems with Price/Unit field not updating in P6 after MSP Import -solution!

Executive Summary:

Well we might of heard of famous edict! - "A Butterfly flapping it's wings in New Mexico will cause a hurricane in China"! - Well this anecdote is often described for butterfly effect- So even if there is a small changes in the schedule then it can lead to be huge impact to the over Project timeline and contribute to Project risks if unnoticed or not controlled.

So critical factor is keeping schedule hygiene and project tracking! Well first most is to have right schedule in place before tracking/controlling.

Many of us might have faced challenge especially when importing a schedule from Microsoft Project to P6. There are numerous factors to decide and checked before we start migrating MSP to P6 Schedule for successful import. In this blog we are going to see a unique case where after successful MSP import, what if the P6 schedule doesn't show any cost - This case Sounds weird right!, well this can happen in rare case and based on my implementation experience I have faced this in many instances - Rare cases have low probability of occurrence and when it hits, it takes lot of effort to troubleshoot and get on track. This article/blog will help you to get insight on this issues and steps to resolve the same.

Significance of P6 EPPM:

Note: When I say P6 it refers to "Primavera " , since I have been using this product for over a decade right from P3 ( we are in R19 now), got used to refer it by name "P6" !

Well this is always a debatable topic in many forums ,and I have used both of these software over a decade equally, based on that P6 EPPM scores high. Up to best of my knowledge , P6 EPPM would be the best product that can be chosen to track medium and large size Projects. When it comes to schedule visibility , measuring team members productivity , metrics analysis based on schedule and cost parameters , Business Intelligence report modeling then without any back thought P6 can be considered.

And I am not going to compare these two software's or going to make a typical table highlighting which is one is best over other, rather the focus will be share the knowledge with outside world and insight on P6 EPPM core functionalities that any Organization/ PMO Middle Office would like to leverage.These are some of the key points which many of the clients would like to track and in my rich implementation experience P6 best suited all these core project and portfolio management tasks. Few Nectar drops as enumerated below

• .Powerful Portfolio Analysis - Org can compare 2 different Portfolio's for key business decisions.

• Dashboard customization and reporting - With scorecards, Pie chart , bubble chart , histograms.

• Earned Value Management

• Recording of multiple snapshots /baselines

• Comparing multiple baselines (3) at a time for better schedule slippage.

• Team Member module to track individual team members work effort

• Schedule analysis - adhering to 14 Points DCMA assessment in a single click

• Desktop and Web versions to help Planners/schedulers and executives respectively.

• Exposure of web services with all key business logic operations to allow customization -More than 300+ services are exposed and can be used.

• Supports integration with other third part Products, etc

There are many more functionalities that we can leverage, here I have hand picked a few which are core ones and in my subsequent blogs I will touch base on each of these pointers with real world project examples.

Why is it required for MSP Schedule to be migrated to P6 EPPM?

There were instances some of the customers wold like to take this paradigm shift from MSP to P6 EPPM to leverage some of the core significant Points mentioned above.

And in this fast growing world, we want everything to be automated, done in single click without having to waste much time in redoing things. Just like the legacy data migration, Organization might have their yearly project schedules, internal tracking schedule, fallback Plan and many such maintained in MSP. With P6 being Active , there is a strong need to migrate all such schedules back to P6, ( both cost and resource loaded )

Background:

There are different formats to import the schedule in to P6, like you use any of the below mentioned formats

1. MPX format - Microsoft supported format

2, XER - This is Primavera readable format This format is to be used only when P6 Schedule from other versions/vendors to be imported

3. XLS - Import Template should align with P6 format headers for successful import

4. XML - MSP file to be converted to XML and then imported in to P6.

Most recommended import format is XML as we can drill down to specifics if there are any issues and fix the same. When a MSP schedule is is converted to XML, all the MSP objects will be presented in form on XML tags ( ex Tasks , Calendars , Resources, Cost) and XML format can be read by P6 thus making it easier.

Note- We need to have a proper "Import Template" to be prepared in P6 before we start the MSP import- This will be covered in a separate blog.- This plays a crucial part while migrating schedules.

Problem Statement:

Assume , we have a schedule that is imported in to P6. In MSP the schedule is resource and cost loaded so it is expected that same should be reflected in P6. But P6 Schedule shows list of all activities, relation ship ,duration, dates and resources correctly that aligns with MSP but "Budget At completion" field or "Budgeted Cost" field shows "0" for all activities.

Reference 1 - Schedule with "0" cost in P6

Budget At Completion Shows Value "0" for all tasks

MSP shows Values for same Project:

MSP has cost at all tasks (Resource and Cost Loaded)

Root Cause Analysis:

When this kind of issue occurs , check following as per Order

1.Check if resources are Properly loaded in P6 as per MSP

Resource Loaded

2. Check individual resources if "Price/Unit" is clearly updated in P6. You can check this by navigating to resources window -> Click specific resources ->Go to bottom pane and select "Unit/Prices" tab

Resources that miss "Price/Unit" field in P6

In P6, resources once created can be toed to activity and in above case at root level, Price/Unit itself is empty which is base for resource budget cost calculation. Hence at activity level we see value as "Zero" which rolls up to WBS and Project level showing Value Zero.

Resolution:

Open the MSP XML in any editor (like Notepad++) . When opened it looks as shown below

All the MSP Objects will be encoded in this file.

Look for <Resource > tag, you can use "Ctrl+F" or search button to go to resource section which is having issues.

Example - Look at <Name> tag and <Initials> tag, which represent "Resource ID and Name" in P6. This tag contains all information related to this particular resource only. If we have 1000 resources for our Project, 1000 tag header will be there.

Navigate to last tag position for this resource , and you will see a closing tag like <Rates/> . But there wont be any opening tag for same <Rates>. So P6 doesn't understand this part of handler and skips this cost part . Thus for all tasks we see value Zero.

To Resolve, either remove the <Rates/> tag seen open ended for any resource and save the XML -> Re import. This will work like charm.

Open ended <Rates/> causing the issue

What if we have "n" number of resources with same issue, and correcting one by one is cumbersome- So smarter way is to write a Java code to scan through these tags with clear filter logic and remove those unneeded closure tags.

This is a typical issue caused when MSP is converted to XML , so there is nothing P6 can do here , hence it is required to correct the XML tag or revise the MSP!

Hope this is informative, happy sharing! Will pen down more core topics in my next blog.

-Cheers

Ganapathi Subramanian

Oracle P6 EPPM Certified Implementation Consultant