Microsoft Project Reviews

We used Microsoft Project to manage the migration from Azure to AWS.

The most valuable feature is probably the Kanban diagram. People are familiar with the Kanban tools. When they do their scrum meetings, they have that Kanban board where you can see the different tiles for all the queries and move them from left to right. IT is familiar with that because, for development, most of the tools have that capability. It could also be more graphical, like Asana.

It would be better if there were more access to Agile implementations. 

I have used Microsoft Project since I started my career with my current employer.

I have used Unitask and Planview PPM. We have been slowly moving to simpler tools to get IT input. Planview is a much more straightforward version of those tools, and it's mainly intended to put up a board, like a work-in-progress board, of all the activities the group is working on. Asana is also similar to those tools.

The initial setup is straightforward. It hasn't changed in years. You add your tasks and have your dependencies and resources. That's a kind of basic functionality in Microsoft Project. Then it drops your Gantt chart on the right, and you get that created. Then you can add the percent complete and track the progress. It's like an office product like Visio, Word, or Excel. You open the application and create your schedule. It's essentially a scheduling tool.

I would tell potential users that Microsoft Project is acceptable if they run a Waterfall project. If they are trying to do something more Agile, they will probably want some other capabilities that the other tools provide, like Kanban tools.

It does what it does, but when you compare it to the tools with Agile capability, they work based on tasks and resource availability. They usually have backlogs of different activities, and the team will decide which ones they want to work on next. Every two weeks, they have a periodic cycle, and they look at the backlog list and pick from there which ones they want to build next. This may not be how they were first defined in a typical Microsoft Project Gantt chart.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft Project an eight.

We use it for the Gantt functionality. We can do project schedules and use the WBS piece to break down the work. We are able to generate reports for leadership to show project schedules, milestone schedules, etc.

It is installed on the desktop. It is not connected to the project server or anything like that. 

Being able to get a milestone schedule or a breakdown out of it is valuable. It can integrate into Visio, which is helpful.

Its user interface could be a little bit more intuitive. Not everybody has the luxury of going to training and understanding which button does what and the functionality. The user interface should be improved to make it a little bit more intuitive. It is not user-friendly. I've dealt with it for a number of years, so it is not hard for me to figure it out, but you would need a quick reference guide or something to say, "Here are the basics. This is how you do X."

I have been using this solution for about five or six years.

It is stable.

I haven't contacted them.

It takes a while to build, but it will probably depend on the project size and all the dependencies. So, it isn't exactly straightforward, but it also depends on the size of the project or the scope of the project.

It is pretty straightforward. There isn't anything heavy about it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for project management. For example, IT implementation projects. 

The Gantt chart view is great. It shows all activities, and the planning of durations is very easy. We can see our suppliers and everything. 

The solution is stable.

It's scalable.

It doesn't really work too well on a Mac.

The initial setup was a bit complex. I find the setup a little bit cumbersome. Sometimes there are certain rules that automatically update something else, and it's not always visible. When that happens, you are left with a surprise.

I've used the solution for six years. 

The solution seems to be stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

With some assistance, it is possible to scale the product.

We have around 1,000 people using it in our company.

I have not used technical support and therefore cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they would be if you needed help.

I have used other products in the past.

The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't overly simple. 

The licensing is handled centrally within the company. I don't have any visibility on the pricing aspect. I can't say how much it costs our organization precisely.

I have evaluated other products. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

I'd recommend the solution. I find it to be quite useful, especially for waterfall-type projects.

I would rate it seven out of ten.

I have used Microsoft Project for mapping out projects and stuff like that. Though I am not heavily involved with Microsoft Project, I can say that it helps with project management purposes in my company.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's GUI is very good since it is very visual in nature. If you are in a project meeting and the customers want estimates of when the project will be done, I think they get the point instantly.

The stability of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement.

I have been using Microsoft Project for a couple of years. I use the solution's latest version.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

The product's scalability is good. We have been using it in our company for quite some time. In our company, we have done many project plans with the help of the solution and haven't found issues yet with the solution.

Microsoft Project is a solution used by three or four people from the senior management in our company.

My company does not have plans to increase the solution's usage.

I have not dealt with the solution's technical support team directly. Some of my team members who have dealt with the solution's technical support team directly told me that Microsoft's technical support is good.

The initial setup of Microsoft Project was straightforward.

Microsoft Project's installation process took around two hours.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Only one junior engineer is required to deploy and maintain the solution.

A consultant carried out Microsoft Project's installation process.

Microsoft Project's ROI has been good so far since we have had no issues in our company, because of which the company plans to renew the licenses whenever they expire.

I am not aware of any additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees of the solution.

I recommend this solution to those planning to use it.

Microsoft Project's potential users should plan their projects well enough before planning to use it. In general, Microsoft Project is one of the best tools available in the market.

I rate the overall solution somewhere between eight and nine out of ten.

Microsoft Project can be used for a variety of purposes, one of which is creating a Gantt diagram. This feature is particularly useful for projects that require establishing a timeline and determining the duration of each task. Additionally, Microsoft Project can be integrated with cloud solutions, such as Teams and Insight, making it a valuable tool for collaborative projects. By integrating with Teams, you can share tasks with team members and collaborate more efficiently. Integrating with Insight allows you to gather data and insights about your project, enabling you to make informed decisions and improve your project management process.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Project is the reminder feature. This feature allows for the system to send notifications or reminders to individuals who have a task to complete once someone has finished their task. This has been especially useful in situations where multiple people are involved in a task. For example, if I have completed my task and the next person is just beginning, the system will send them a reminder to notify them of my completion. This feature has proven to be very beneficial and convenient for me in my tasks.

In a future update, the system should be more inclusive and open to everyone, not just limited to one organization. For example, there may be instances where we want to bring in a guest from outside our organization and integrate them into our project. It would be beneficial if the system was more accessible and easy to integrate with other projects. Additionally, it would be great if there was a way to receive notifications, regardless of whether they come from a Gmail domain or another domain, to keep us informed of any incoming tasks.

I have been using Microsoft Project for approximately a few months.

In my organization, the stability of the solution has been good.

The scalability of Microsoft Project is good.

I did not use the support.

I used previously Microsoft Visio.

I used Microsoft Visio to build network architecture and especially for drawing a structure.

In the setup of Microsoft Project, the process was a bit challenging initially. The main reason was that I was not sure where to start in a safe and secure manner. Microsoft frequently updates its software and resources, but it can be difficult to find the necessary documentation for a specific solution. It is crucial to have some prior experience with similar products to effectively locate the necessary information. For someone who is just starting out and does not have the proper training, guidance from an instructor, or hands-on experience, the setup process can be quite complex.

The implementation of the solution was swift and effortless. The amount of time it took to deploy would largely depend on the specificities of your project and what features are required or optional. From my personal experience, creating the project was simple and straightforward, and did not require a significant amount of time. The deployment process was smooth and efficient.

I have received a return on investment using the solution.

The license fees for the professional version, which is estimated to be approximately $1,600, and the standard version, which is approximately $1,200, may be considered expensive by some users. This is something that could be improved to make the platform more accessible to a wider audience.

You can purchase other solutions from Microsoft and receive this solution in the package, such as Visual Studio, it offers numerous benefits, including access to a variety of Microsoft solutions, including Project, Visio, Office 2021, and more. This makes it easier for me to access everything I need.

I highly recommend the solution due to its ability to enhance organization and improve task management within projects. It is possible to stay informed and up-to-date with any delays or discrepancies in the work being done. The solution is immensely valuable. I wholeheartedly endorse this process.

I rate Microsoft Project a seven out of ten.

We use it for IT project management. It is mainly used for managing tasks.

The standard project planning features and charts are most valuable.

When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project.

Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project.

I have been using this solution for 15 years. 

It is stable but not for huge project plans.

I am using its desktop version. They also have an online version where you can collaborate and do things like that. It is Office 365, which I don't use. 

In terms of users, around 10,000 people might be using it. Its users include service delivery managers, project managers, and business analysts.

I never had to use tech support for Microsoft Project.

I have used a competing product that was free and open-source, but it didn't have as many features as Microsoft Project.

We are kind of migrating to Jira for the agile model because we mostly have agile-based developments. All task stories and other things are managed in Jira. We are not using Microsoft Project that much now. It is only being used for project planning and for creating task dependencies.

In my organization, it is already packaged and available. 

I would advise others to learn about project planning. There is good enough information available online on Microsoft's website.

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight out of ten. It is good at doing what it is supposed to do. 

Microsoft Project helps to manage our projects.

We can't say that there has been an improvement. We are trying to get to that point, but we are only into it with the new version for a month.

It comes with our Office 365. 

We started using it and we stopped using LiquidPlanner. 

I am most comfortable using Microsoft Project just because I have used it for so long, but we are still trying to figure out the new version at the moment.

The new version has made it a bit more complicated. We are trying to synchronize Project Online and Planner.

In Team Planner, there is supposed to be a way that you can sync your tasks in the Project Plan with Planner so that the project team doesn't necessarily need to use Microsoft Project. They can see what tasks are assigned to them, do them and update the status.

But, we haven't been able to figure that out yet.

They can make it easier to streamline the product. 

When using Microsoft Project, the desktop and Planner don't seem to talk to each other as seamlessly as I would hope. It is possible that it is a user error and we have not configured it correctly. My IT team is new to it as well.

I have had approximately 20 years of experience with Microsoft Project.

I just started using the latest version a little over a month ago.

I have the desktop app and on the cloud.

At the moment we have an issue with synchronization with the planner. We are trying to get it to work by watching YouTube videos and the IT director has been working with the vendor to see how to get the functionality to work.

It's unknown if we need a plug-in or not. It is difficult to decipher whether or not it's us or them because we are so green with the product.

From what I can tell, there is a lot that you can do with it. Power BI, reporting, SharePoint, and Teams are all supposed to connect in some way, but, it's not as intuitive as I thought it would have been.

There isn't a lot that is available that tells you how to do this. You have to figure it out which is what we are trying to do. I wish that it was a bit more straightforward.

Currently, there are two of us who use Microsoft Project because we are trying to get it configured in a way that makes sense for our organization before we can bring in the rest of the team that may need to use it.

We have not used technical support.

Previously, we were using LiquidPlanner.

LiquidPlanner is a tool that you would use in an ideal situation for project management, which almost never happens. I can't get my organization to punch a time clock, and that is what LiquidPlanner is.

The initial setup is a bit more complex than I would have hoped for or that I am used to. Again, it is possible that it's a lack of know-how and education with this product.

It gets expensive when having to add all of the plugins and everything that you need.

I would suggest using an expert. Get an implementation vendor to set it up for you.

This solution probably does everything that I need it to do, but I just don't know how to do it yet.

I like Microsoft Project and it does everything that I need it to do, but it doesn't do everything. That's Microsoft; they always get you to about 80% there, and then you need some type of plugin or API. It never quite does everything.

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight out of ten.

Whenever we have a client with a complicated situation, we create a project plan. And we use Microsoft Project (MS Project) for administrating, monitoring, and tracking the project.  For most small projects, MS Project is satisfactory.

We can input information and then share it with the project team and stakeholders. That helps a little, but if somebody changes their mind, it could change how we manage the project. There are some new features in MS Project 2021. However, more features aren't necessarily useful because now you must train people to use them. They may say, "Why do I need this new feature?" Newer versions of MS Project display a warning when a task runs behind schedule. However, it is necessary to input a date change for that warning manually, and administrative action takes precious time.

It's possible to get input from other programs, such as Outlook, but we don't use Outlook for anything other than email, even though it could do other things. Time is a critical resource. We don't have time to learn about these features and use them productively, so they are of no value to us.

MS Project's resource leveling capability is beneficial. We like this feature. We want to be able to expand tasks and look at different resources and task usage. It is good at assigning tasks to teams.

It's generally compliant with the Project Management Institute approach to project management, which means MS Project helps us be more uniform and consistent in conducting each project.

MS Project can insert objects, like a drawing or an Excel worksheet, but cannot handle business rules. Also, I would like to see better integration with graphics applications such as MS Visio. The graphics are primitive and need some major work. I would like to have the ability to insert some small macros within the project for Monte Carlo risk analysis. For example, if you're unsure how much time a task may require, you can generate a reasonable guess.

MS Project is very time and labor-intensive to keep current. You need to update it continually. You may find that you are spending more time maintaining the MS Project file than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to do that.

MS Project should have the capability to link it to other applications to make the program dynamic when a real-time resource or schedule changes, but it is not dynamic. It would be helpful to insert real-time input data for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see the impact in real-time, if possible.

I want to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. Also, we might have a project underway seven days a week.

External data sources, like third-party manufacturing processes, impact some tasks. Embedding external processes within MS Project is almost impossible because we don't have programming resources here in a practical sense. Also, the interface of Microsoft Project is proprietary. We want to link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs and integrate them automatically with our master project plan, e.g., specific third-party CNC machine data. The supplier's system does not interface with ours'. We have to get the outputs from their system serially and manually update the MS Project file to determine the schedule impact. That takes time. There is a risk of data entry errors at both ends. On tight projects, every minute counts.

I would like to see a control system interface with Microsoft Project. Real-time system data helps predict cost and schedule variances. For example, if you had to finish a day ahead of schedule, you could "talk" to the systems' software and determine if a given machine works for another four hours, then you could meet the accelerated schedule. MS Project requires manual data entry with a risk of mistakes. Presently, there is no automated data entry capability in MS Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most companies don't have the same problems we have with MS Project.

When you're working on a project that has to get done, you will spend most of the time wrestling with Microsoft Project, whereas you should be using these hours to manage the project.

Thinking on a slightly bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one application, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that, at least not easily. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see an active program or at least the capability to be dynamic, even if it is close to real-time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time systems. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be superior to what exists now. It may not be genuinely real-time, but it is at least closer to it.

I want to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library or write a macro. Whenever I change the data in an Excel file for a given project or task, it should update the corresponding Visio or PowerPoint file. If I'm doing a pie chart or any graphic, I don't want to manually update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. Microsoft doesn't make significant changes every time they come out with a new version. However, they don't appear to fix the issue. Instead, they add a few features.

I have been using Microsoft Project since it was released in the mid-1980s. Although MS Project can be helpful, it does not teach project management.

It's relatively stable. I've never had a crash. I can't remember it ever crashing. If I  entered some information that it can't resolve, it usually comes up with an error message.

I think it is limited to around 400,000 tasks. I am not sure. I never had to go that far. We have five consultants who are remote users.

I've never really needed any support. When Microsoft has a seminar or a meeting locally, I might go to it and give my feedback.

Neutral

Installation is automatic and simple, we had no issues.

The implementation was done in-house.

MS Project pays for itself by helping me keep my thinking straight.  The purchase price of the application is insignificant when compared with the time involved in trying to do project management manually on paper attached to large poster boards. We did it that way before the advent of PCs.  There is some benefit to seeing an entire project plan on paper to provide a visual idea of project scope and progress, but intelligent use of MS Project can generate the same information.  It takes a lot of time to become so proficient with MS Project that these key bits of information are generated automatically through accurate and complete task definitions, WBS, and project schedule updates.

Make sure you have a good business reason for purchasing MS Project. It isn't cheap and there are free alternatives, with simple capabilities, available.

MS Project was sufficient for our requirements, so we did not evaluate any other options.

Make sure you understand what MS Project can do and what it cannot do. It cannot read your mind. Just like any other program, it only does what you tell it to do. If you give it the wrong information, it will provide you with incorrect output. It is very labor-intensive. There are minimal capabilities to help you write routines. So, you have to change dates and task names. If you don't understand project management concepts well, you're just going to delude yourself into thinking MS Project helps you. You have to understand the process of project management to use the application effectively. Otherwise, you are wasting your time. It will not teach you how to do project management.

I would rate MS Project a five out of ten because it hasn't evolved that much. Microsoft added lots of bells and whistles, but they don't add much new value. They don't save me much time. I want MS Project to be a dynamic program, but it remains a passive program after more than 30 years. I've made comments about it at some seminars hosted by Microsoft. We've told them to make it a dynamic program or at least have an option to make it active. We would be willing to pay more for this capability. It's worth it, but they don't do it. I guess they don't see enough business potential in doing it that way, and I don't have the resources to create an internal application to make it that way. I am not in that business.