by James Watt

Created on: November 24, 2007

Evaluating Microsoft Project is a bit difficult due to the pervasive nature of this project management software. In light of this, it was beneficial to seek the opinion of a small group of experienced project managers in order to expand the breadth of project management software experience. Of the four engineers I interviewed, only one indicated a dislike for the operation of Microsoft Project. All indicated the software met their expectations, kept the project team informed, and put out colorful gantt charts and other project control measures. the outlier, and avowed Dilbert fanatic, had more heartburn with the widespread universality and innovation crushing market dominance of the Office suite, rather then any significant problem with the Project software package. Interestingly, neither he nor one of the other engineer project managers could even name a competitor's product; maybe he did have a point.

Microsoft Project is not a project leadership tool. It has no inherent capability to display assigned responsibility, nor to measure results. It also has no interface to calculate risk. As a scheduling tool, it is superb. It interfaces seamlessly with other parts of the Office suite, and is the most prevalent desktop project software I've seen in the past five years. I myself have had several classes in Microsoft Project, and still feel it necessary to refresh my skills occasionally. It is easy enough to use this software, but sometimes the work scheduling and resource allocation does not have the ability to reflect partial and intermittent project work by team members.

That being said, No one I know has it on their home PC, and even those able to buy it through Starbucks company bulk software purchase discounts neglected to do so. Project is most useful for schedule management and Gantt charting. As a result, everyone instead uses Outlook to establish deliverable based meetings, and therefore Project is used to simply track that accomplished work. Project is a good tool due to shared files and universality of software. I'd recommend it to anyone, who gets it for free on their work PC. For home use, another tool, such as Microsoft outlook, and a freeware gantt chart maker is sufficient.

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