Go with the gold standard on this one (Project Planning and Scheduling)
September 19, 2017
Go with the gold standard on this one (Project Planning and Scheduling)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Project
I use it to manage very large (>5M line) software projects with large teams. For me it's both an invaluable planning tool, as well as a status roll-up tool. If it were integrated into source code management, it would be even better. Nonetheless, it's without peers in project management, and I've used them all.
- It's very well integrated with other Microsoft office tools. This saves me a lot of time when I'm writing up stuff for my team. I manage a lot remotely, so we rely a lot on written communication, otherwise I'm up all night with different geographies.
- It's way too easy to get lost in the details. Microsoft Project has a great 'roll-up' view for overall projects or big parts thereof.
- We have a number of very scarce resources, like academic advisors. While we don't control their schedules, we need to 'ration' access to them, and Microsoft Project is great at handling all sorts of resources. As we've gotten into more 'borrowed lab" engagements, we've been able to schedule and manage scarce physical resources as well. Better calendar integration would make that a lot easier, though.
- Really good calendar integration, in all modalities.
- A more expert-AI advisor. Each release has come with its own learning curve. I'm remiss in reading up on each new feature, as I primarily upgrade for hopefully improved security and support.
- Better adherence to schedules. This is simply because every team knows they're being tracked to schedules (which they've largely input).
- Repeated slips make forecasting repeated slips more accurate. It would be nice if it could forecast.