Microsoft
Project
is a very misunderstood application. It is reminiscent of other Office
applications, with menus and toolbars like Word, and tables and graphs like
Excel, but when you get into it, you see it’s very different. In some ways, it
seems to do things on its own.
Project is the most narrowly focused of all the Office applications. While the
other Microsoft Office programs tend to be broad and general in their
application, Microsoft Project is designed exclusively to manage resource usage
and project scheduling.
It will not manage your project for you. It will not stop you from giving your
resources too much to do. It will not tell you what is going to happen, but it
will let you know what might happen if nothing changed. Just like any other
software, Project should be used as an informational system and not as a crystal
ball.
Project also assumes the user is familiar with the concepts of project
management, and unfortunately for most this is the challenge of Project. We have
taken some of the confusion out of Project by providing the user with a
"project guide toolbar" that assists and develops consistent and
repeatable project practices with the tool of Microsoft Project2000.
Stop
the frustration with a tool that is supposed to help, and start using it in a
logical and reliable way. Check out our Integrated Project Management workshops
that will instill these disciplines. The time you will save not fighting the
tool will far exceed your investment.
