Product history

The core concepts of project scheduling were laid down in the years following World War II, as construction projects in the United States became larger and more complex. By the 1960s, these concepts were being implemented in mainframe computers by such entities as DuPont, IBM, and the U.S. military.

In 1983, Joel Koppelman and Dick Faris founded Primavera Systems in Philadelphia. Their vision was that these same principles of project management could be implemented on desktop PCs, which were then just making their way into common use. The first product went on sale in 1983, available on a set of 5¼-inch floppy disks that held a whopping 360 KB of data each. The application required 256 KB of RAM to run, which was quite a lot at the time.

And so Primavera Project Planner (P3) was born. The company was quite successful and eventually P3 became the leading scheduling product in the engineering and construction industries. In fact, it soon became a requirement for certain government contracts that schedules could only be delivered in a P3-compatible format.

In the late 1990s, with the rise of networks and the Internet, it became clear that the future of project scheduling software lay beyond a single product installed on one person's desktop. Instead, project scheduling was moving towards systems that could be accessed simultaneously by multiple people in different locations.

In 1999, Primavera acquired Eagle Ray Software. This company had created a product in 1998 called Eagle Ray 1000 Project Management Suite. Primavera took ER1000 and released it as two products in 1999: P3 e/c, which was marketed for Engineering and Construction, and TeamPlay for IT and Financial services. Over the years, the products have appeared to merge and diverge, adding capabilities such as timesheet entry, integration, and portfolio analysis, eventually evolving into what is now called P6. In 2004, Primavera 5.0 was released, and in 2007, P6.0 was released, followed by P6.2 in 2008.

In 2008, another major change occurred. Primavera, a privately held company, was bought by Oracle, a publicly held corporation.

Enter Oracle

In 2008, soon after P6.2 came out, it was announced that Oracle Corporation was buying Primavera. Starting as a database provider in 1979, Oracle had grown over the years into a large and influential company, focused not only on databases, but on providing an array of software products that are fundamental to managing modern businesses. This array included enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, content management systems, analytical and reporting systems, and application servers and technology, to describe just a few. In order to ensure that they also owned the best-of-breed in project scheduling software, Oracle acquired Primavera Systems in 2008.

Since the acquisition, P6 has undergone a number of changes. First, the various names were consolidated into one: P6. Oracle also spent considerable resources improving and adding to the product. For example, P6 now supports a standards-compliant Web Services API; it can run from a cluster of WebLogic or WebSphere application servers; and the full capabilities of the system are now available through a web browser.

P3 and SureTrak

Some users may confuse P3 and SureTrak with P6. P3 is the heir to the original Primavera Project Planner product. It is a standalone desktop application. SureTrak was a lighter version of P3 designed for users with simpler requirements, and so had a limit on the number of activities it would support. Both products have reached the end of their life cycles, and sales of P3 and SureTrak officially ended on December 31st, 2010.

Yet this is not the end of the standalone desktop client. With P6 version 8.1, a true standalone version of P6 was created, finally closing the gap that sprang open in 1999 when Primavera bought Eagle Ray, and set separate tracks for its desktop and enterprise solutions. Now users can have the power of P6 on their laptop with P6 Professional, or deploy P6 Enterprise and gain the additional benefits of enterprise-wide capabilities. P6 release 8.2 allows these two products to work even better together.

What's in the name?

The product that we all know as P6 is officially named Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, which is quite a mouthful. But the name accurately reflects the scope and purpose of the software:

Enterprise: Unlike P3, which was a standalone application designed to be used by a single user on a dedicated machine, P6 is designed to facilitate multiple users across a large organization. It is a true multi-tier system, with a database on the back end, an application server in the middle, and a web server to which users can connect through an internet browser client such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. This means that the system is very scalable, and can support hundreds of users working on thousands of projects with millions of activities. This also means that it can support companies with geographically diverse projects and a workforce spread across the globe.

Project: At its heart, P6 supports projects. But what is a project? In the Project Management Body of Knowledge, a project is defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 4th Edition, The Project Management Institute, 2008). A project can mean different things in different industries, but projects comprise an amazingly large part of the commercial world. Traditionally we think of construction with respect to projects. But making entertainment is also a project. Think of all the people and equipment and coordination required to make a movie, television show, or album. Developing a new drug is a project as well, starting with basic research and moving to clinical trials, government approval, marketing, manufacturing, and distribution. Each of these is a project by itself.
But what matters is this: A project has a scope of work to be done, a timeline for completing the work, and a set amount of resources to do the work. All of these can be measured within the boundaries of the project. P6 allows you to make these measurements, and it gives you the ability to react to these measurements (scope, schedule, and budget) to ensure that your project accomplishes its goals.

Portfolio: With very few exceptions, a project does not stand alone. A studio creates many movies over the course of a year. A pharmaceutical company develops many different drugs. An energy company has facilities ranging from the frigid tar sands of northern Alberta to the tropical coastline of Brazil. When making strategic decisions about what projects to pursue, which ones to pour more resources into, and which ones to halt, you need to see the larger picture. This is the grouping of projects into a portfolio. P6 can handle thousands of projects and has analytical capabilities to roll up information across projects and perform analysis across the enterprise. This allows decision makers to understand their business from a broad perspective, and to take action on that information.

Management: There is an old adage that says: only what can be measured can be controlled. P6 is about planning projects and measuring progress as the project moves forward. Although P6 is very flexible in how it can be used, it is also designed to help you manage projects well. And when used properly, you can maintain a reliable budget, anticipate cash flow and resource usage, and record and react to changes as they arise. What's more, you can bring the various members of the project team together, set standards, and define the right way to run projects at your specific company.

In a nutshell, P6 is designed to help organizations manage their projects in a coherent manner, giving them the power to make better decisions and allowing them to focus on the best strategies.