Insights

PMA’s Rey Diaz, a Senior Associate in our Orlando office, details the exciting possibilities in Project Summit. Rey has substantial experience in process improvement, construction and contract management, and program management office coordination.

As our Innovation Group actively develops NetPoint’s Project Summit for schedule summarization, we have it tested by PMA’s experienced project controls staff. Rey found a need for Summit in aiding in his summarization of large P6 schedules. He shares his workflow and case study below.

Current workflow is to:

1. Import the schedule XER into P6 (this step takes from 9 to 13 mouse clicks)
2. Look for the correct layout
3. Open the layout (at least 6 mouse clicks)
4. Adjust any filters (at least 3 mouse clicks)
5. Collapse the schedule at different levels (at least 2 mouse clicks)
6. Review major milestones for changes
7. If deviations are found, I would trace the logic to understand the root causes

This process with P6 takes too many steps, and when you must repeat it for several periods/projects, it is very time-consuming.

Now, I simply open the XER in Project Summit. In seconds, it generates a Time Scale Logic Diagram, with a swim lane for each WBS level (or code), that allows me to start my review.

The tool is extremely fast and allows me to trace logic on the fly. Even for software in its early stages, I consider Project Summit a lean tool as it has streamlined my current process. If you haven’t tried it, just do it!