Item: Microsoft Project
Rating: 7
Author: Cristian Bodnarasec

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Project was for many years the goto platform for project management at eSilicon. Most of the managers from different departments were using it to manage their projects: tasks breakdown and assignment, resource management, tracking tasks progress, etc. While it does the job well, it also has some flaws and things to improve. Due to this, there are many other tools that gained market share in the last several years and will continue to do so even more.

Pros and Cons

You can manage any size project and complexity.
The visuals of the timeline and gantt charts.
The way task dependencies work and the whole plan gets updated for any change you do.

It is so easy to mess up a complex project plan by a simple change and can take hours to fix.
It is lacking the collaboration that is so needed these days. You need to use Project Server for that.
The cost is a differentiator for many start-ups selling project management tools.

Return on Investment

For many years Microsoft Project helped us manage our projects well.
It increased the time to market for some of the projects.
While it helped with our project management, the cost of this tool is not negligible.

Usability

Microsoft Project was for many years the reference tool when you were talking about project management software, even if it has some gaps. However, in the last several years, other tools emerged and covered those gaps and are getting more and more users. Microsoft needs to keep up with the trends as they did with adding Project Server. However, that needs a significant rework.

Support Rating

Did not use support for Microsoft Project.

Alternatives Considered

Smartsheet

Smartsheet came from behind covering some of the gaps in Microsoft Project and started to become more and more popular. And for good reason, it combines the main features of project management from both Project and Project Server. It provides good user experience and it is cheaper than Microsoft Project.

Other Software Used

Basecamp, OpenAir PSA, Wunderlist

Likelihood to Recommend

For almost any project size and complexity, Microsoft Project is well suited. It saves a lot of time by helping with project team communication, tasks breakdown, task assignments, resource management, etc. However, you need more collaboration. For example, team members need to update the progress of the task in real-time themselves, so that you have better project tracking and increased visibility into the progress.

The former reference software for project management

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Project