MS Project and Primavera P6 are both reputed software for project planning, reporting and progress updating, tracking. Both the software are used worldwide and they have their own benefits. The following highlights some of the detailed feature differences between Primavera P6 over Microsoft Project.
Major differences
It’s clear that Primavera P6 was designed for the enterprise from the start, while Microsoft Project migrated from a desktop application and added enterprise capabilities with Project Server. Now that Oracle owns Primavera P6, this gap is accentuated with the introduction of other heavy weight Oracle applications that support Primavera P6. Examples of these include Primavera P6 Analytics, Business Intelligence Publisher, Workflow and Primavera Gateway. These tools allow for integration with other enterprise applications marrying project information with other corporate data, applications and dashboards. Microsoft has not stood still either, with additional offerings such as SharePoint and Dynamics.
With all these true enterprise capabilities in mind, below are some of the more detailed features differences listed by real users. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. It is also important to note that we’re not recommending one product over the other.
Multiple User Access
Microsoft Project doesn’t allow multiple users to work on a single project at the same time, Primavera P6 does. In Primavera P6 you can specify what features of Primavera P6 a particular user is permitted to use. Microsoft Project Server supports many projects at the same time, but a user locks a project when it’s in use.
Primavera p6
Baselines
In Microsoft Project, 11 baselines can be created for a project. In Primavera P6, unlimited baselines can be created and as many as four of these baselines can be assigned at any one time to a schedule.
Progress and Status
Primavera P6 offers a feature called Progress Spotlight. This Progress Spotlight highlights activity table rows in yellow if they are due any status in the next period (day, week, month, quarter or year). Microsoft Project requires the development of filters to allow for the selection of activities requiring status.
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Issues & Risk
Microsoft Project lacks a feature for tracking project issues or risks. Primavera P6 can record issues and risks against a project, WBS element or activity.
Web Support
Primavera P6 plans, documents and other information can be converted to HTML directly from the software. Microsoft Project doesn’t have such options.
Steps
The Steps feature in Primavera P6 allows you to create sub-activities (steps) of an activity; effectively a to-do list for discrete progressing. Each step has a weighting that can be used to drive % complete for an activity as the steps are marked off as completed. The additional P6 Step Template allow this feature to be used for common processes that appear often among projects. This useful feature is missing in MS Project.
Expenses
In addition to resource costs, Primavera P6 allows planned, remaining and actual project expenses (training, travel, ODC) to be entered at the activity level. Microsoft Project doesn’t have this capability.
MS.Project Reports
Custom Fields
Both Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 allow you to create custom fields. Microsoft Project also allows you to set complex formulas or use fields and add additional values to it, to use in the custom field.. In Primavera P6 you can create a blank custom field, but you cannot set formulas to it, so users have to manually enter values in each field, for each column. You can use Activity Codes in P6 to create a column that has values that can be picked from a list similar to the Lookup feature in Microsoft Project’s custom fields.
Columns
Primavera P6 is has many columns. It comes installed with over 200 columns, each giving you different information. Column categories include EVM, Budgeting, Costs, etc. In Microsoft Project, there are only around 40 columns.
Multiple Activity Relationships
In Primavera P6, more than one type of relationship can be established between activities, e.g. we can have FF and SS between the same two activities. In Microsoft Project only one relationship can be made between two activities.
External Relationships
In Primavera P6, multiple projects can be opened at one time for editing. This allows for relationships to be established between activities in different projects when inter-dependencies exist using identical techniques to assign the relationships. Microsoft Project uses a special feature called Links Between Projects to achieve inter-project dependency modeling.
Project Website
Primavera P6 can create a comprehensive website comprising of all the project details including activities, resources, reports, risks, issues, WBS, and anything else that a user can define. This website feature is not present in Microsoft Project.
Multiple Project Creation and Tracking
Both Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 allow for multiple projects to be created and viewed. However, Primavera P6 capabilities extend beyond this to include multiple project tracking, multiple project or WBS comparisons, cost and units calculations.
Discussions
Primavera P6 has the ability to have threaded discussions with other team members from within the tool.
Hint Help
To help new and experienced users alike, P6 Professional offers a Hint Help toggle feature that explains the values and calculations for a column when the cursor is placed on the field. No equivalent feature exists in Microsoft Project.
Which one You Should Learn?
If you are heavily involved in a project or multiple projects, and you are requiring to computerize every detail of your project you should go for Primavera P6. Or if you are working on a single project that doesn’t require you record details other than activity schedule, resource list, and assignment details, use MS Project as it is simpler.
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