Planning Using Primavera SureTrak Project Manager Version 3.0 Revised 2006

This book is a complete rewrite of the 2004 book and not just an update. It includes more student workshops, many new pages of text and covers more software functions. It is designed to teach planners and schedulers how setup and use the software in a project environment and this version explains in more detail about how to plan ad control projects with the software. It is aimed at any industry such as building, construction, oil & gas, software development, government and defence. The book is aimed at: - Project management companies who wish to run their own software training courses or provide their employees with an alternative text to the user manual. - Training organizations who require a training manual to run their own training courses. - People who wish learn the software however are unable to attend a formal training course.

Table of Contents:
1 Introduction 2 Creating a Project Plan 3 Creating Projects and Setting Up the Software 4 Navigating Around the Screen 5 Defining Calendars 6 Activity Codes 7 Adding Activities 8 Formatting the Display 9 Assigning Activity Codes and Organizing 10 Adding the Logic 11 Constraints 12 Filters 13 Layouts 14 Printing and Reports 15 Tracking Progress 16 Alternative Methods of Organizing Activities 17 Options and Schedule Forms 18 Creating Resources 19 Assigning Resources To Activities 20 Resource Histogram, S-Curves and Tables 21 Using Activity Types and Driving Resources 22 Resource Leveling Function 23 Statusing Projects With Resources 24 Tools and Techniques For Scheduling 25 Project Utilities 26 Index

About the Author :
Paul Harris holds an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering obtained in the UK and is a Certified Cost Engineer through AACEI International, a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner and Approved PRINCE2 Trainer. He has worked in the project controls industry for a number of years and has assisted many companies in a range of industries to set up and run project controls systems. His Melbourne, Australia based company, Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, offers project controls consulting and training services with a strong focus on Microsoft Project and Primavera software.

Review :
Makes an incredible program more incredible, April 25, 2002 Linda Zarate from Azusa, CA United States When I reviewed the SureTrak program here last may I considered myself to be an experienced used who fully understood the features of that powerful PM application. After reading this book I found out that I was only using a fraction of the features that are built into SureTrak. For example, while I knew that it supported multiple calendars. This feature gives you absolute control and is especially useful when you're using subcontractors or multi-national resources. Until I was stepped through it by the book's lessons I didn't know how to fully exploit its power. It was the same for reports. SureTrak includes reports for every conceivable management style and project type. The problem is there are so many that it's difficult to select the ones best suited to each project's unique requirements or your PM standards. This book clearly explained the reports and clearly explained how to create custom reports in the unlikely event that what you need isn't already included. I also learned a lot from the lessons on resource management, as well as the author's tips for project management in general. If you're using SureTrak you should get this book because it's a safe bet that you're not using everything it has to offer for planning, scheduling and control - and this book will reveal them. Fast start to using the power of SureTrak, April 16, 2002 Mike Tarrani from Tustin, CA USA Although SureTrak Project Manager 3.0 ships with adequate documentation and the program is intuitive, there are three good reasons to buy this book: 1. The product documentation covers every feature - the information about planning and managing projects using this powerful tool is scattered throughout, making it difficult to tap into SureTrak's power without wading through an overwhelming amount of nice-to-know, but non-essential detail. 2. Although anyone who has used Microsoft's ubiquitous MS Project will have no problem getting started with SureTrak, they will miss the true project management features of SureTrak that are not present (or don't correctly work) in MS Project. This book identifies those features and shows how to use them effectively. 3. The author goes beyond merely describing how to use SureTrak by showing you how to use effective project management techniques, many of which take years of managing projects to discover. The book is structured as a series of 20 lessons (called workshops) that are designed to step you through setting up a project, and planning and scheduling it. If you follow them in sequence you will be able to not only set up a project using SureTrak's rich feature set, but will also pick up general project management techniques along the way. An example of one such technique is how the author classifies projects into four levels for planning and controlling. These levels are based on project complexity, with Level 1 being the simplest and suitable for short projects, to Level 4 for complex, high-value projects. You are given the planning and tracking criteria for each project type, which allows you to tailor your approach as well as ensure that you don't over-manage simple projects or under-manage the complex ones. You are also shown how to use the more powerful features, such as the many project views (work breakdown structure, activity or resource), managing the sophisticated calendaring functions, and effectively using the resource profiles and reporting features. I particularly like the way earned value is treated. The author shows how to use SureTrak's facilities for managing to earned value, as well as explaining this essential technique (which, by the way, is now a part of the Project Management Institute's PMBOK 2000 version). Another bonus is the way scheduling is explained by walking through adding logic to activities. You'll not only be shown how to perform this task, but given reasons why you should use one approach from among four possibilities to establish relationships. In this example the choices are start-to-start, finish-to-start, start-to-finish and finish-to-finish. This book is clear, concise and heavily illustrated with screenshots from SureTrak. The tutorial style and the way the lessons are sequenced will get you quickly up-to-speed with SureTrak and give you the knowledge and skills necessary to employ it with minimum reference to the manuals that come with the software.