Hi BCFC,
My firm uses Microsoft Project to run $10 million projects involving teams of 50 or more people and hundreds of linked tasks. If you take the time to learn it, you can use it to create Gantt charts (showing the duration of project activities), allocate production hours (determine how long it will take to finish a task based on available resources) and determine the critical path (those activities that delay overall project completion if they are even one day late).
What do you want to use Project for? People could offer more relevant comments if they knew your ultimate goal.
Cheers!
Brad
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by: PreachDotNetPosted on 2004-05-04 at 05:46:11ID: 10985976
Microsoft Project is an entry level project manager. It has a full set of diagrams available and can handle multiple projects. It has a VBA back end so is programmable and can be accessed via COM from other programs. It is compatible with all other Microsoft products so should be able to pick up data from Access and Excel. You will find you get results quickly and the GUI is simple to learn and easy to use.
It does not scale to large organisations and multiple users updating the projects very well though. In some respects it is too complicated for simple projects yet far too simple for complicated ones.
If you are developing a manufacturing system then use software that will add things like JIT inventory etc. If the project your running is software based then you may find that the problem domain is far too complex to map at the beginning of a project, in which case you may need to supplement the software with a good UML modelling tool. Beware analysis paralysis though and try to keep your tasks as broad as possible.
You may also have issues with what-if examination and contingency planning.
I personally find Microsoft Project sufficient for my small 4 - 5 people projects.