For planning engineers, here is some advice I wish I knew early in my career.
1- Don’t spend all of your time figuring out how you can use P6 in every project control area. The role of P6 is limited. You will need to do a lot of work using other tools such as Excel or Power BI.
2- Don’t try to master every scheduling software out there. It is better to improve your skills with the tools that you use on a daily basis unless it is necessary to add a new tool to your workflow.
3- You can become an expert in software but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a qualified planning engineer. Softwares are just tools. Your mind controls them.
4- Developing your project control mindset and growing your skills take time. There is no quick fix or an easy shortcut.
5- Working hard doesn’t always mean that it is a good sign. Being productive and able to deliver results matter the most.
6- Experience is the greatest teacher. It is better to put the time into work than to watch tutorials all day long. Consuming knowledge and practicing its applications improve your skills.
7- There is no universal way on how you should implement project control tasks. That’s the beauty of it. Everyone is unique in his/her operations. Most of your decisions should be based on a strong mindset, logic and common sense.
8- A schedule can consist of thousands of activities. Every activity has many attributes (e.g. budgeted total cost, earned value, % complete, etc). Some attributes even change every week. You must learn data analytics and use leverage to manage such huge sets of data. There is no way around it.
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Regards,
Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
