It is not enough to update your P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) schedule. In Primavera P6 EPPM summarizing projects is important so that the summary tables populate with your updates.
Summarizing projects after updates is important, to ensure that the summary tables are current. This is because the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) retrieves its data for display from the summary tables. So, if your summary tables are not filled with the most current project information your EPS reports will be outdated, and, therefore, deficient. In order to ensure accurate EPS reports summarizing projects after each update is essential.
This article looks at Primavera P6 EPPM summarizing projects.
Recently, I was reminded of the importance of summarizing project schedules in P6 EPPM. Not only do you want to summarize your projects whenever you update your schedule, you need to also summarize the projects that come standard with P6 EPPM when you first log in.
My failure to summarize projects upon first logging into P6 EPPM meant the summary tables were not fully populated. They were missing some important project details. In particular, the planned total cost of the project was not appearing in the EPS. In this situation the summary tables contained some project information, but not enough to provide all the most up-to-date project data.
Let us explain the summary tables. Depending on whether a project is open or not P6 EPPM retrieves project data from either Project Detail Data memory or Summary Table Data memory. As displayed in Figure 1, when a project is open P6 EPPM retrieves the project data from the Project Detail Data memory.
Detailed project data is viewable in the Projects | Activities page. When no projects are open P6 EPPM retrieves the project data from the Summary Data memory for viewing in the EPS, Projects | EPS, Figure 2.
It is important to note that the Summary Data tables do not automatically populate as the Project Detail Data is updated. You must manually Summarize the project, so that P6 EPPM copies the Project Detail Data into the Summary Data tables.
In Figure 3 we have the Primavera P6 EPPM EPS view.
Note the projects in the Energy node. These projects have not been summarized. This can be deceptive. Some of the data in the Summary Data tables has been filled, but not all. Observe the Gantt chart that is not displaying the start and finish dates of the projects. Also, note that the Planned Total Cost of the projects in the Energy node does not display. This may lead you to think the projects are not cost loaded. That is not the case. They are cost loaded, but they have not been summarized.
To summarize the projects in the Energy node, select the Energy node and choose Actions | Summarize Projects, Figure 4.
The dialog message ‘Summarizing Projects’ then appears, Figure 5.
You may see the warning message that the Summarize Projects process requires more time to complete, Figure 6.
If so, select Okay. Confirm that process completed by checking the Service Status, Figure 7.
If Figure 8 we see that the Summarize process is complete, Figure 8.
In Figure 9 we see the P6 EPPM EPS view with the Summarized projects in the Energy node.
To summarize the projects in other nodes, select the respective node and choose Actions | Summarize Projects.
Summary
In Primavera P6 EPPM summarizing projects is important, so that the EPS view displays the most up-to-date project data. Remember that the Summarize Projects process is not automatic. You must manually choose the respective project and/or node and select Summarize Projects. Again, the EPS displays high level Summary Table Data of summarized projects when the projects are not open.