Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Project
Pros
- Microsoft Project allows users to input a large and varied amount of detail pertinent to a specific project and then creates numerous varied out reports, as per the specific needs of a certain user working on that project.
- Microsoft Project is very flexible in relation to the familiarity of a specific user with the Project. Someone with very little knowledge of Project can still input some data and receive some useful reports, without using the whole capability of the package.
- Project allows a varied types of data to be inputted, such as definition of various subtasks related to the project, time information about the original estimates for tasks and the actual figures, monetary information about the cost of all items required to complete a project (such as rate per hour of specific participants working of a project, cost of equipment to be bought or rented, cost of materials required for project execution, etc).
- A Project Manager very conversant with Project can get a very large number of reports, each one for a specific need.
Cons
- The Project software package, while being very powerful, it also has a rather lengthy learning curve. A fresh Project Manager which didn't use Project before (due to being in a different role, or using until now a different project management tool) and put in charge of a project having as a requirement the utilization of Microsoft Project for a new project starting very soon, will have a hard time to assimilate all aspects of the package, if he wants to take advantage of Project's full capabilities.
- While not being exaggerated, the cost of the software package is relatively high (around $650.00) This is maybe not a lot for a company needing one or two packages, but is relevant to a company needing to procure 20 packages.
- I would like to see more specialty books pertinent to Project. 'Leaning Microsoft Project Step-by-Step' issued by Microsoft themselves and used by me when I started learning Project is a bit cumbersome, unlike other books in their series for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.
- On the projects that I dealt with, Project had a positive impact on the overall business objective, allowing realistic estimates of the duration, personnel, equipment and materials extremely important for the preparations of responses to RFQs (Request for Quotations), ensuring that the company is not capturing a contract for work that the company is very well capable of performing, however, due to a bad quotation, is not going to realize any profit.
- Once a contract is awarded, Project again had a positive impact, by allowing the construction of a correct WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), the personnel requirements, the identification of critical paths, the budget to be allocated and the creation of work orders (WOs) used by team members for weekly reporting of the hours expanded on the project , the purchase of equipment sufficiently in advance of the date when it will be needed and the identification of specific personnel required to be assigned to the project team, as per they specific skillset, and also when each member must start working on specific segments of the overall Work Breakdown Structure.
- Once the project started, Project was invaluable in monitoring the actual progress of the project in comparison with the very initial schedule and its milestones, the identification of slippage and enhancing an early advance for the formulation of solutions required in order to pull the schedule back.
- Project also was highly beneficial in creating practically automated financial reports of expenditures to date, such reports being of high on the priority list of higher up management.
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