If you’re new to the world of Deltek Cobra 5.1 welcome to an ever-growing community of earned value professionals who’ve discovered the power and flexibility of Cobra and why it is the best-in-class tool on the market today.
While that is our opinion of Deltek Cobra 5.1, it is based on years of experience implementing it on programs from $5m – $500m in various industries across the US and Europe. It has delivered every time no matter the demands we’ve placed upon it, and continues to prove itself in the field where other tools have floundered.
In addition, you have Deltek’s continued commitment to Cobra’s long term development and improvement, augmented by a team of knowledgeable support consultants just a phone call away. These are just some of the reasons we continue to recommend Cobra above all other systems.
This article is about getting started with Deltek Cobra 5.1 quickly and easily. It provides some tips and tools to get you up and running and get your earned value management system ready for years of solid compliance and accurate reporting. While I don’t have the column inches to give you a full getting started manual for Deltek Cobra, I can at least attempt to give you some helpful context about where Cobra sits in your Earned Value Management System (EVMS) and a few tips on setting up and learning the tool.
Context
The following diagram shows how Deltek Cobra is positioned among the other common elements of your EVMS.
You can think of Deltek Cobra 5.1 as being at the center of your finance and project scheduling systems. Cobra uses data from the schedules to create the initial performance measurement baseline. As the project gets under way, Cobra loads the latest status data from the scheduling system too. Therefore the updates you make to the schedules are now driving the earned value and Schedule Performance Index (SPI) figures in Cobra. It is also able to load forecast data to assist with your Estimate To Complete (ETC) calculations.
The finance system is also supporting Cobra’s earned value calculations by providing actual hours/cost data on a periodic basis. This drives the Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) and Cost Performance Index (CPI) figures.
With this data, Deltek Cobra calculates the performance of the project and generates all the standard Contract Performance Report (CPR) formats in Microsoft Excel files for reporting to your customer. This includes a comprehensive export wizard to share periodic data with Deltek wInsight, providing CPR formats and excellent trend analysis charts and graphs to both the project’s management team and the customer.
The Integration Wizard
All of the above is made possible and easy to execute using Cobra’s unique Integration Wizard. The Integration Wizard allows you to connect Cobra to virtually any system using easy step-by-step controls. Once you have achieved a successful integration, you can save the configuration for future use.
Not only does the integration wizard make it easy to integrate with all the leading project management and finance systems on the market today, it also makes it easy to load in your WBS, OBS, Resource calculations, rates and other code files you need from spreadsheets; data that often already exists in the organization. In short, the integration wizard is one of the primary reasons why Cobra can be installed in any EVMS regardless of the legacy systems already in place.
Deltek Cobra 5.1 – Tips for Learning
Create a Sandbox Instance
One of the first things I recommend for learning Deltek Cobra 5.1 is to use one of your licenses to create a standalone “sandbox” installation on your machine that sits outside of the production system that your IT folks have likely installed. You can do this by installing one of the free “Express” versions of Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle on your machine and then install Cobra pointing it at that database. Deltek Cobra works with either of these free databases. This gives you a “Have-at-it” instance of the software where you can practice your skills and become familiar with the tool without risk. An alternative is to have your IT folks create a development instance of Cobra for this purpose.
Sample Data
Having some sample data to use as a guide to how projects should be setup is invaluable. When I first started using Deltek Cobra back in the version 4.x days, the tool came with an option to initialize demo data. I used these samples extensively in my sandbox to understand how to setup the system. In version 5, you can load these samples into the Cobra system using the File | Manage Files | Restore File… function in Cobra.
The .CMP files are located in your C:\Program Files\Deltek\Cobra\Samples\Backup directory.
Learning Tips
- Login to your sandbox system using the SYSADMIN user, default password is ‘password’, all lower case. This will give you unrestricted access to all the functionality. By default it offers GUEST as the user, but this has some restrictions.
- Restore one of the sample projects as described above (suggest Demo Advanced).
- Open the project by double-clicking on it in the Projects tab.
- Explore how Cobra has laid out the Control Accounts and Work Packages in the upper table of the Project tab. Control Accounts are the blue shaded rows, work packages are the white rows below. Click the + button to expand a control account.
- Highlight a work package in the table area and then look at the General, Resource Assignments and Milestones/Steps tabs to get an understanding of how the data is structured.
- Click on the Cobra Explorer tab and work your way down the list of horizontal tabs on the left. Click to open each one and double-click on the objects therein. Starting with Calendars, then Codes, then Rates and finally Resources. Each of these components will give you insight into how the main elements of a typical project are setup in Cobra. They are referred to as Ancillary files in the documentation. You will need to create your own versions of each of these before you can create a project. Note: if you are integrating with Open Plan, P6 or Microsoft Project, you can instruct the Integration Wizard to build some or all of these required ancillary files for you based on the project data.
- Use the Online help to guide you through the different areas of the project. Unlike many online help systems, Cobra’s is pretty good and does give you helpful instructions and detailed explanations.
Don’t get Overwhelmed
Deltek Cobra 5.1 has vast capabilities. Like many sophisticated applications there are myriad features, many of which you’ll use only occasionally, some never at all. Focus on the core components. Which of these you will need depends upon your role. I’ve broken them down here by role to help guide you to what’s important to learn first.
Deltek Cobra Administrator Roles
Mastering these following items will give you a solid understanding of Deltek Cobra’s data structure and architecture. It will be vital that these elements are well understood in order to build and develop your first projects.
Calendars – learn how to create a new calendar (right-click and choose Create New Calendar… to get started). The resulting dialogs are intuitive and you should be able to build a new calendar easily. Keep in mind you are creating a list of the dates that represent a period end (status dates). This should ideally align with your company’s fiscal reporting cycle. These dates will be used by Cobra to determine the status date for each period and the time-phased structure of the resource spreads and reports such as CAPs. Calendars are global objects and can be used on one or more projects.
Codes – the code files contain such data as the WBS and OBS that will underpin your projects. Codes are global objects and can be used on one or more projects.
Rates – the rate file allows you to build a list of rates that will be used by resources to calculate the cost of labor, materials, ODC, Overhead and other direct or indirect costs that you will need to calculate to arrive at a planned value of work. You can also determine forward pricing of resources over time by setting dates for rate changes and their new rate values. Rate files are global objects and can be used on one or more projects.
Resources – this area allows you to define the resources that will be working on the project and how to calculate the final costs for those resources. For each resource you can build up a profile of direct cost and burdens such as ODC, Overhead, General and Administrative and so on. This file is linked to the rate file during the creation process so that you can refer to the rates already entered and build the cost profile for the resource based upon these rates. This is one of the more sophisticated areas of Cobra so you will need to work with the online help and sample data to understand how to develop a resource’s calculations. Once mastered, you will have cracked the trickiest portion of Cobra’s administrative setup. Resources files are global objects and can be used on one or more projects.
The Integration Wizard – an intuitive and user friendly tool that allows you to connect to your schedule, finance and other systems to load project, cost and ancillary data. You will need to master this as part of your administrative role.
Advance Calendar – learn how this feature works and how it is critical to the monthly update cycle. You need to advance the calendar as part of your preparation of loading status from the schedule and actual costs from the finance system.
Calculate Earned Value – this feature is run once all the status has been loaded from the schedules. It literally calculates the EV for work packages based upon their current status.
You should also become familiar with the items described in the next section for cost analysts. As the administrator, you will eventually need to understand all the main functions of Cobra.
Cost Analyst Role
In this role, you will need to focus on the analysis and reporting capabilities of Deltek Cobra 5.1. As the administrator will likely be performing all of the setup and monthly maintenance of the data, you should be able to focus on analysis capabilities to start with.
Projects – navigation of the Projects tab and its projects, explore and become familiar with all the main tabs, data tables, their columns and rows using the Sample Data.
Analyze – this tool is accessed via the Projects menu and is used for drill-down analysis of the projects Control Accounts and Work Packages. It highlights items that have exceeded their thresholds in terms of schedule and/or cost variance. It can also be used to enter variance narrative to report on such conditions.
All Reports – this tab contains all the standard CPR formats, Control Account Plans, time-phased reports that you will need to analyze the project status. Cobra creates all its reports in native Microsoft Excel format so it is easy to distribute the information and perform analysis calculations on the output.
Take a Training Class
Last but not least, after you’ve had some time to get familiar with Deltek Cobra 5.1, it’s vital you invest in some training to fill in any blanks and get your questions answered. While I’ve tried to outline the key functions of Deltek Cobra 5.1 here, there is much to learn and it does take time and above all, experience to build your skills. Instructor-lead training will short track this process and save you a lot of time.
As intuitive as the Deltek Cobra 5.1 user interface is, the real trick is learning the language of Earned Value Management (EVM) tools, learning how to interpret the output and most of all, how to track down the cause of unexpected numbers when they appear.
Watch It In Action
You can also watch our 13 minute supporting video tutorial ‘Getting To Know Deltek Cobra 5.1’
To read more Deltek Cobra articles click here