Kgobalale John MalatjiProjects Portfolio Manager | Noko-impJohannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
These two tools have different capacities and capabilities. If one has access to both of them, what will determine a choice of one over the other? Saving Changes...
I would first define your need ! What functionality you need?
Then see if both meet you requirement and plan futur growths .
Seek a presentation by both company. Saving Changes...
Morne BeeslaarManaging Director| Faolan ConsultingPretoria, South Africa
Few things I would consider:
1. Complexity of the project as well as duration - the larger the project the more activities you need to schedule and maintain. MSP works well up to roughly 5000 activities and then becomes unstable (my experience) this leads to data loss and crashes, baselines not being uniformly assigned etc.
2. This is where the a database backed system (Primavera and other) steps into the fore. Manages large volumes of data and maintain integrity across baselines.
3. So in my view is look at what you require, no need to buy a Ferrari if all you need is a Prius. If your planning skills are modest, start with a tool which is not going to make your life more difficult in getting to grips with planning basics.
4. Mining projects typically are done over very long time lines +5 years and the scope is not very clear at the start. In these instances I would use Primavera installed on your company server, with stand alone instances for your planners. This allows for the development of the schedule scope over a long period while maintaining history of the scope and as these projects run into tens of thousand activities it's also more stable. Just don't implement the web instance for detailed planning as this is going to frustrate the hec out of your planning team. Saving Changes...
Ramachandran SwaminathanRegional Delivery Manager| Oracle Consulting IndiaBangalore, Karnataka, India
Morne - Neatly summarized answer by you !!!
John - In addition to not being able to handle large/complex projects, MSP is also not a great tool to track costs. It doesnt have extensive reporting capabilities. As Morne mentioned most of the Natural Resources sector clients use Primaver since they spend lot of money over a long period of time and tracking/reporting costs is very important Saving Changes...
Great info from Morne. One further item I would add is timesheeting- project staff can easily record their time in Primavera, while to do that in MS Project I believe you have to have Project Professional, Project Server and Project Web licences, which really adds up expensively. Also the Project one does not chase them up or monitor compliance, so it is a lot of admin overhead for someone.
So as well as for larger projects, projects where reporting is important, projects where cost tracking is important, and longer term projects, Primavera is better for projects with lots of project team members. Saving Changes...
Andre CassuleFEED and Detailed Engineering, Project management| DEALLuanda, Luanda, Angola
Microsoft Project is more flexibility and particularly in the small to medium projects. Primavera is more professional specially when it comes to Cost Management of large projects. Saving Changes...
Mark EckmanSenior Project Manager, PMP| VeoliaEmporia, Va, United States
Thank you Morne for sharing your experiences with both of these PM tools and putting some excellent context to their use. And thank you to everyone's add-ons.
I have been very frustrated at times using MS Projects and would agree with all of the comments on how limited the Cost Tracking functionality is on mid to large projects. All of you make a great case for looking at Primavera for larger projects, and I am doing just that. Saving Changes...
I have see a few places where Primavera is interconnected to the time sheets of the accounting system it work great.
I can't say if it is possible to do with MSP Saving Changes...
Kgobalale John MalatjiProjects Portfolio Manager | Noko-impJohannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Thanks all for the advice
Morne, thanks for the insight! Saving Changes...
