My wife and I have a vacation home in Truckee, California. Whenever we are up there we get together with a couple who have a second home just two doors down from ours. During our last visit we met the wife's charming mother for the first time. After several hours of pleasantries she asked me a slightly odd question:
"Are you a professor?"
"No", I replied. "But I do teach scheduling and software classes."
She went on to explain that she thought I spoke very clearly and explained my thoughts in a logical, concise manner. So her comment about my being a professor was certainly meant as a compliment. She was not a native English speaker, and she complained that her son-in-law speaks much too quickly. On the other hand, I had no trouble understanding her at all.
And it occurred to me that learning a language is a lot like learning how to schedule projects or to use scheduling software.
Most of us who have tried to learn another language have been exposed to those classes where you put on a pair of headsets and repeat various phrases in the new language like, "that is a very big fish!"
Which is only helpful if you happen to encounter someone holding a large fish.
Okay, so these classes do teach more useful phrases and even I have managed to order hot chocolate in Rome without feeling like a complete dolt. Tourist, yes. Idiot? As they say in Italian, "no".
Still, there is nothing that quite prepares you for going to another country and trying to strike up a conversation with a local. You have no control over what they are going to say. The answer is not in your handy phrase book. They may also speak with a dialect that is unfamiliar. What you learn has to have a practical application to your situation.
One of the criticisms of many engineering programs at universities is that students spend their first three years learning theory without any explanation as to why and how they will be applying this knowledge in the real world. I switched majors from Civil Engineering to Construction Science because of my own doubt about how I would use my degree. Differential equations seemed irrelevant to someone planning to take over the family construction company.
The dilemma for a university professor, however, is that students are incapable of providing much feedback other than demonstrating their retention of knowledge. It is not like one of the students is going to say, "I am planning to build clean water facilities in remote locations with no power grid, so what are the best practices?" The professor teaches a standard curriculum which should cover "all the bases", so to speak, and the students do not know enough to ask questions.
When I teach scheduling and Primavera P6 classes, however, nearly all of my "students" are professionals who have several years of experience and who also have particular expectations. They are all about "what can Primavera P6 do for me?" This is why Oracle refers to its partners like ours as "solution providers". Anyone who has used Primavera P6 knows that it is very powerful. But different companies and different industries have their own unique demands.
Case in point. During a recent private training session for a major company we discussed several issues. There are short, turnaround, projects that are over very quickly and for this reason the duration format is hours, meaning the activity durations are expressed in hours. But the construction projects take much longer, so the preferred duration format is days. So within the same company not all schedules are built the same way.
Pro Tip: it matters to the instructor whether the student will be sharing a database with other users. The Administrator of the program has control over certain parameters such as Earned Value, which means that all users are subject to the same conditions.
We also discussed how the turnaround projects use "pull-planning" to establish the optimal dates for each activity, the construction projects follow a more traditional Critical Path Method schedule whereby some activities have float. With pull-planning you are essentially looking at only the "late" dates in a CPM schedule; finishing early is not a goal or even desirable.
What about resources? In this case, the company does track labor and equipment (what P6 labels as "nonlabor") but does not cost-load its schedules. I often warn my clients that when discussing resources, output determines input. What type of reports and charts do you expect P6 to produce? Do you track individuals or crews? Will actual hours or costs be inputted? This particular company also plans to integrate P6 with another planning program, which affects how the schedule should be built inside P6.
The fact is, none of my private group training classes are "typical". My clients are sophisticated companies that have been planning and scheduling for years. But they might be switching over to P6 or looking for "best practices" when using P6. It is pretty common for someone with P6 experience to say to me, "P6 can also do that?" Well, when you use P6 nearly every day of the year you do tend to learn a few tricks. It also helps to be an Oracle partner with unlimited access to Oracle engineers.
While I do occasionally have people in my classes who are quite new to scheduling, I am otherwise not some university professor pouring knowledge into somewhat empty vessels. And in private group classes we have the opportunity to discuss corporate preferences as well as my own. This is where videos alone are not the best form of training. Besides not being able to ask questions, there is no collaboration between instructor and pupil.
Ultimately, just learning how to use a software program is not enough. Anyone with P6 experience can tell you what a button does when you push it. Whether you should be pushing the button at all is harder to learn without the guidance of someone who has practical experience with the program. Any amateur can create some videos and proclaim themselves an "expert" on P6, but those of us who do this full-time are not fooled.
Our firm does offer On Demand (i.e. video) training, but we back this up with live online and in-person training sessions. In addition, we also offer private (custom) training to anyone who wants to take their knowledge of scheduling and P6 to the next level. Why sit through a regular training session when you can focus on your needs with one of the most experienced schedulers in the United States?
I have great respect for universities, having a Masters degree myself, and I studied the Critical Path Method of scheduling during my undergraduate days at Kansas State University. I learned the practical side of CPM scheduling, however, working alongside experienced schedulers. It occurred to me, for example, that no one explained how to properly update a schedule at university. Other schedulers showed me what to do.
And now I would like to pass along that knowledge to you!