Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Project
We use it as a quick and dirty backup to P6 scheduling software. We have an in-house scheduling department that uses P6 to schedule our projects. However, for teams looking for a quick schedule that need turnaround when the scheduling team is unavailable or when it just makes sense to make a project themselves (ourselves), we can use Microsoft Project as a little more user-friendly quick option.
- Schedules and Logic.
- User-friendly.
- Easy to learn interface, similar to all Microsoft products, so familiar to most new users.
- The overall look of the schedules produced is a little lackluster. There are not a whole lot of customization options, and to the construction field, it is quickly recognizable that the schedule was produced in Project. It's not a bad thing, but not the industry standard. I think it would be better to design the output to follow P6 just for credibility. It almost looks a little bit "cartoonish" or juvenile. Now I understand that MS design is certainly "better looking," but this is simply in comparison to the industry standard for credibility purposes.
- The simplest answer to this is that it makes "on the fly" or quick turnaround scheduling possible without engaging an outside provider or getting bogged down in the long list of scheduling projects that our in-house scheduling team is working on. Its best fit is for small and fast-tracked projects.
P6 is the biggest competition and, as previously noted, is the gold standard in scheduling in the construction world. We select them in some cases, and Project in other cases, depending on how much experience in scheduling the end user has under their belt.