If you've worked on major capital projects, you’ve probably crossed paths with Primavera P6, even if you never opened the software yourself. It’s the backbone of most project schedules, and for years, it was part of my day-to-day life in Project Controls. I relied on P6 and Microsoft Project to develop and manage schedules, report progress, and navigate shifting timelines across engineering, procurement, and construction.

But even as a power user, I saw the limitations: P6 is incredibly strong for building high-level project timelines, but not designed for engaging the broader team, tracking real-world execution details, or adapting easily to dynamic environments.

That’s exactly why we built Optimality.

Rather than trying to replace P6 outright, Optimality is designed to augment and enhance it with powerful visual workflows, commitment planning, and detailed process modeling that go far deeper than a Gantt chart can support. And in some cases, depending on the organization's needs and maturity, Optimality can stand in for P6 entirely.

1. Visual Flow Diagrams That Go Deeper Than Gantt Charts

Despite appearances, P6 Gantt charts are not as detailed as they seem. While they show task sequences and durations, they’re often kept at a high level to avoid overwhelming the schedule and the people who have to manage it.

Yet those same people - engineers, vendors, team leads - need more clarity to effectively execute.

Optimality’s activity flow diagrams break work down visually, showing inputs, outputs, interdependencies, and key handoffs in a format that’s intuitive even for non-schedulers. Teams can interact with the flow, update status, and dig into associated tasks and deliverables, all without cluttering the P6 master schedule.

And because each activity in Optimality can be mapped to P6 using unique identifiers, all that detail can be exported back into P6 to help maintain status and alignment.

2. Commitment Planning Brings Accountability into the Daily Rhythm

P6 may provide the critical path, but it doesn’t drive team-level coordination. Too often, weekly syncs become passive check-ins, and updates to P6 lag behind actual progress.

Optimality solves this with Commitment Planning:

• Team members select which activities they’re committing to for the week.

• These commitments are visible to everyone, enabling alignment and transparency.

• At the end of the cycle, they self-assess, creating a lightweight feedback loop that improves trust and reliability.

This supports a culture of accountability, not through micromanagement, but by giving people ownership over their part of the plan.

3. Planning at a Level P6 Wasn’t Designed to Handle

In my years managing schedules in P6, I quickly learned this: you can’t build a detailed execution plan inside P6 and expect it to stay accurate. It’s not built for that level of granularity or day-to-day updates.

Optimality picks up where P6 leaves off.

Teams can plan and manage work at a far more detailed level: breaking out subtasks, tracking deliverables, uploading content, and linking work to specific inputs and outputs. It’s structured, but flexible, designed to adapt to reality.

This deep-level planning stays within Optimality, keeping the P6 schedule clean and focused, while still syncing key status updates as needed.

4. Standard Process Libraries to Scale What Works

Optimality enables organizations to build Standard Process Libraries: reusable templates of activities and workflows that can be applied to future projects, scopes, or teams.

It’s a game changer for scaling best practices, onboarding new teams, and reducing startup friction. Instead of reinventing the wheel, teams can start from an approved flow and adapt as needed.

5. Opti AI: The Intelligence Layer P6 Never Had

Where P6 provides structure, Opti AI adds proactive insight:

• It reviews uploaded content and detects version changes, flagging which activities and stakeholders might be impacted.

• It processes meeting notes and transcripts to generate tasks and link them to the appropriate activities.

• It identifies inconsistencies between commitments and actual progress, early enough to do something about it.

It’s not just automation, it’s decision support.

Final Thoughts: Complement, Extend, or Replace. You Decide

Optimality is not here to compete with P6, it’s here to collaborate with it. But we also recognize that every organization is different. In some cases, P6 remains the system of record. In others, especially for smaller or more agile teams, Optimality becomes the primary planning platform.

As someone who’s built, updated, and defended project schedules for years, I can confidently say: Optimality brings project plans to life. It turns disconnected updates and dusty timelines into a living system of work that teams can truly engage with.

If you've ever felt like the schedule isn't telling the whole story, it's probably not. Optimality is here to help you fill in the gaps.