Microsoft Project Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is to track our projects. The solution is deployed on cloud.

The solution has allowed us to monitor our projects in real time because it is tracked based on what has been prepared and executed.

The daily tracker is valuable because once you set it up, the dynamic teams can go and implement the project. Additionally, we can track the progress of what is being done. We can know the dates of tasks, when, and if there are deployment issues.

The product or service could be more user-friendly, and forecasting could be better. For example, a few things were added to the Microsoft Office standard software and the project online standard software. It screwed up our forecast and implementation, and we advised them to revert to the standard to fix the issue. Microsoft made some changes, and we're trying to figure out what was implemented and how to use it. We don't use the focus anymore, and we use Microsoft Project to try and drive it.

We have been using this solution for over 15 years and are currently using the most recent version.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. There are over 300 people currently using it in our organization, and we intend to increase future usage.

We have not had any contact with customer service and support.

I cannot comment on the licensing costs for this solution.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. I advise new users of this solution to understand what their company needs. I think it's better to implement the standard software when you've understood what is required, as it is scalable and can be gradually adopted.

It is easy to define timelines with Microsoft Project. You can get a clear picture of the model, you want to create.  You can create inside an agile or waterfall model. Microsoft Project is easy to delegate tasks to different members where you want to put the task and who you want to work on it so that you have a clear path.

Right now you can create a timeline with the major up tasks, but there's no real way to mark it. When you are planning, you usually have resources on board for a single task.  Microsoft Project has no way to mark it because it is based more on agile methodology. Many times you want to take it by the resource count and that is where it becomes tricky. 

 I would like to see an entire baseline, like in JIRA. It is like project planning in JIRA, but there's a whole story building that you can do. Microsoft Project needs to incorporate some points of story-building and epic building, which are currently missing. 

I have been working with Microsoft Project for the past month.

Microsoft Project is a stable solution.

There is no problem with Microsoft Project's scalability.

I do not use Microsoft technical support because our company has its own technical support team.

I only use a login feature for Microsoft Project. 

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight and a half out of ten.

Microsoft Project is one of the main tools our teams abroad use for planning, and it's very flexible. Local teams use it to manage small projects locally. It's also a repository for storing financial information that we don't want to track down. 

Teams use Microsoft Project for tracking tasks, managing requests, assigning resources, and following up. Workers can submit work to managers for approval and then it's submitted to the main process. 

Microsoft Project provides a starter tool that project managers can learn before moving on to solutions that are more convenient or widely used in the company. The interface is intuitive, so anyone can jump in and start planning. 

It's also a tool that is common among many companies, so if I take a new job at another firm, there's a good chance they will be using Microsoft Project, too. When we hire a new person, they can usually start working right away without any training. We only need to teach them how to apply that knowledge to the other tools we use.

Microsoft Project integrates well with the Microsoft Office family of applications. It has plugins that interact with it and you can use it with Microsoft Teams. We can use plugins to communicate with JIRA, Projectplace, and Planview. It's not widely used in the company, of course, but it's something that can interact with the official tools that we have. 

You can do a lot of stuff with Microsoft Project, but the licensing is for individual computers, so it's not connected to a central platform like the one that we have in Planview. 

Planview FLEX licensing gives us a central repository where all the projects are stored so you can check the finances, resources, etc. It's quite useful to have everything connected. We don't have that for Microsoft Project. It's disconnected. The reporting capabilities could also be better, especially with finance and resources. Everybody complains about reports. That's why we need another tool. 

I've only been using Microsoft Project for a year. I have more experience with Planview Projectplace, but we use this as well. I'm primarily responsible for Projectplace in my role. I do onboarding for other teams, create the workflows, and work with use case scenarios for various teams worldwide. 

It's an on-premise solution. It's never going to break down because it's installed on a local computer. It's highly stable from that point of view, but our use case is also limited. 

A project management application is only as powerful as the information you put inside. Projectplace is available to time reporters, developers, engineers, resource managers, and financial controllers. It is a powerful tool that provides a centralized way to gather information. 

A director can access Projectplace and see every project involving their teams. You can create custom reports. We have teams that design new reports for the various needs we have. That's the most powerful feature a project management solution can have—the ability to pull out information. That's something we don't have with Microsoft Project.

I rate Microsoft Project seven out of 10. Better tools are available. Microsoft Project is a decent tool for small startups and medium-sized projects, and it's widely used. 

We work with customers to develop products from scratch. The process involves multiple design teams, financial controls, and planning. Each project is part of a larger program, and we have to follow up on that. There are tons of tools that can do this way better. Microsoft Project, in my opinion, is for small and medium-sized projects.

Microsoft Project is one of the only solutions you can use in just about any industry. It's difficult to do that with most other project management tools. There is a lot of flexibility within the product assets. Most sectors can utilize Microsoft Project successfully because it doesn't have any generic adapters. Primavera is a competitor from Oracle, and they've got adapters for some industries but not others. For example, they have adapters for construction management, so people who are on construction projects usually go for Primavera because the adapters make it easy for them to scale out a project.

With Microsoft Project, you need to do more work to get the same thing, but that is the advantage of having adapters. Adapters make it easy for certain sectors to implement their projects, but Project doesn't have that, so anybody can use it. That is the best thing about Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project has much room for improvement. The solution is still stuck where it was in 2013. Not much has changed since then. There is a lot that can be changed in the enterprise segment.

There hasn't been a significant addition to the enterprise part of Microsoft Project since 2013. The biggest change was the integration of Power BI reporting into Microsoft Project. Other than that, we are seeing still the same features 

Some of the underlying things have changed. For example, data management is quite different. It's called Dataworks, and database management is different. Data is handled differently, but there haven't been any new features on an enterprise scale. 

Microsoft has developed more user-friendly Project implementations beyond enterprise use cases. They're transitioning from the enterprise platform to something that everybody can use, but they are losing out on features.

We have been selling Microsoft Project for a couple of years.

Microsoft Project is stable, but it requires a lot of customization. 

Microsoft Project is highly scalable. It can handle anything from one user to 10,000. What makes Microsoft Project different is that a single person can handle thousands of tasks in a project easily.

We haven't spoken to anybody at Microsoft support because they do not have a big team on Microsoft Project for this region, but we learned about production solutions through implementation. 

We picked up a couple of orders for Microsoft Project for certain shipbuilding companies. We took their projects and did a study, then implemented a solution for them that was tailored to their particular needs. We learned on the job, but there was no guidance or support from the vendor.

Project is essentially an extension of an Excel sheet. You need to configure a lot of things to get your project management done correctly, and the use case scenario is different for each customer. Some require Project for certain needs, which may not be the same for the next customer. We need to understand the customer's work requirements, and we will build a solution on Microsoft Project.

Seven out of 10. My advice for Microsoft Project or any project management solution is to set clear goals. You need to have a vision in mind when thinking about Microsoft Project deliveries or any other project team delivery. If you don't have a clear vision, you may not realize project value, and that might lead to issues.

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.

Our company uses Microsoft Project primarily for project planning and milestone tracking.

The tool helps us to check milestones. After doing tasks, our team updates them. Regarding functionalities in Microsoft Project, the number one feature is reminders. With so many projects, sometimes you forget; some projects might slip up or disappear. This feature is very useful.

Additionally, we can track the tasks we can do within a particular project, which is another feature we use. Lastly, we use the tracking function to set deadlines and see what is being accomplished and what remains. The design team uses these features. 

The tool's integration was easy and seamless. We also use it to get a summary of the entire business.

I would like to see a direct integration of Microsoft Project with AutoCAD. It will make client presentations easy. 

I have been working with the product since 2015. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability a six out of ten. It's a bit complex to ask some new users. In terms of scalability, for example, if you have two projects or departments you want to merge, you might face challenges. You might have to type them in manually and do manual merging. So, if something could be done to simplify this, it would be great. My company has around 15 users. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.                        

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We use Microsoft Project for its timeline and task management capabilities. The primary advantage is the easy application of tasks in sequence, confirming dependencies, and establishing relationships between tasks. It simplifies handling conditions, significant dates, and dependencies between various tasks.

The tool's most valuable feature is scheduling. 

Microsoft Project's reporting is very complex and not user-friendly. 

I have been working with the product for ten years. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

The tool's deployment is very straightforward. 

I rate Microsoft Project's pricing a five out of ten. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use Microsoft Project for application lifecycle management (ALM), use case definition, follow-up, and project management activity.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Project is status reporting. Microsoft Project is easy to use and has a user-friendly UI.

Microsoft Project should include more visualization, queries to filter out data, and more reporting structures.

I have been using Microsoft Project for two years.

Microsoft Project is a stable solution.

I rate Microsoft Project a nine out of ten for stability.

Microsoft Project is a scalable solution. Around 50 to 60 users use the solution extensively in our organization.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team.

Microsoft Project is an expensive solution.

Microsoft Project is deployed on the cloud in our organization. I would recommend Microsoft Project to other users.

Overall, I rate Microsoft Project a nine out of ten.