A Quick Tour of Team Member Web
With Primavera P6 EPPM Release 8.2 comes an interesting new tool, the Team Member Web application. This wonderfully simple interface opens the door for collecting status from folks who’ve never even seen the full Primavera P6 EPPM system, yet alone know how to use it.
The potential for this tool is widespread and we are very excited to see how it will be received in the market place. Right out of the gate this would be a terrific tool to have in an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) for collecting status from Control Account Managers (CAMs). Add to this the existing iPhone App and E-mail status capabilities and you’ll find that you can run, but you can’t hide. As you’ll see from this article, Primavera P6 Team Member web application is a simple setup and a piece of cake to use.
Here’s a quick tour of the steps to setup and use the new Team Member Web application. Click on any of the images to enlarge them.
Configuration
The P6 administrator will need to create logins for people who will perform the role of activity ‘Owner’ and provide them with Team Member module access.
The project manager can assign activity owners using the Owner column in the Activities page. This will determine who can update status using the Team Member Web application (see following image). Alternatively the project manager can choose to use resource assignments that have a login associated with them as Team Member status providers.
Either way, that person can login to the Team Member Web page and status any activities they own or are assigned to.
In this example, the project manager has made Roland Baker the owner of five activities in the Titan II Orbiter project.
Using Primavera P6 Team Member Web
Assigning ownership causes these activities to appear in Roland’s Team Member web page. At this point, Roland can enter status information for any of the activities he owns.
Roland can start an activity, adjust the actual start date, enter a % complete or units completed value, status activity Steps, E-mail an interested party or check the activity to mark it as completed. With some basic filters and the ability to add up to three activity codes or UDFs to the screen, Roland is empowered to status his portion of the main program without even seeing a Gantt chart.
Activities with steps will cause an additional ‘Steps’ portlet to appear in the right-hand list when selected (above). This can be used to mark steps as completed or enter percent complete values against the steps.
Once Roland completes his changes, he can click the Save button.
The Approval Process
However, the project manager has probably configured the project to provide an approval step before exposing his precious critical path to unknown and possibly unsavory update blunders. This ‘Aproval’ configuration is set in the EPS page under the Actions > Set Project Preferences > Team Member Applications menu and dialog. The project manager checks the ‘Allow reviews for Team Member status updates’ option, thus activating this protocol for the selected project.
When the project manager next logs in to P6, he will receive a message prompt in the lower right of the screen indicating that there are pending status updates. This will happen as soon as the manager enters the Activities page.
The project manager can also access the ‘Review Status Updates’ dialog using the Actions menu of the Activities page (or by clicking on the ‘Click to review updates now’ link on the message dialog).
From here he sees all the pending activities with details of their status. The project manager can override the status updates for specific activities or accept the status as is using the Override and Accept buttons.
Once the status is accepted, the data is written to the project schedule and the updates will show immediately in the Activities view of P6.
In the above image, you can see the actual start dates and percent complete values as reported in the Team Member web application.
Summary
The P6 Team Member web is simple to use and users could be trained in under 30 minutes, if training is even needed. This is an outstanding solution to an old challenge: when implementing enterprise project management systems, not everyone has the time or the need to learn a specialized and sophisticated tool such as Primavera P6. We can see this being a popular option for organizations looking to widen the collaborative net and capture more accurate status information from the people closest to the work. We also see this being a useful option for CAMs in an EVMS environment, keeping them directly involved in the IMS and providing truly objective information regarding progress.
The best part is that by introducing the concept of activity owners, this tool is available to organizations that plan work using generic roles or resources, not just those making ‘belly button’ assignments to the activities. No matter what level of resource you assign to schedules, the Team Member web application is a serious option.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on how you might employ this new tool in your situation.
Watch Primavera P6 Team Member In Action
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