Assignment 1 by GM079600 & SN080491 (CSEB233): December 2008

CASE TOOL - Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft which is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. The first version of Microsoft Project was released for DOS in 1984 by a company working for Microsoft. Microsoft bought all rights to the software in 1985 and released version 2. Version 3 for DOS was released in 1986. Version 4 for DOS was the final DOS version, released in 1986. The first Windows version was released in 1990, and was labelled version 1 for Windows. An interesting thing to note is that the first version for DOS introduced the concept of link lines (dependency lines) between tasks in the Gantt chart.

Microsoft Project was the company's third Windows-based application, and within a couple of years of its introduction WinProj was the dominant PC-based project management software. Although branded as a member of the Microsoft Office family, it has never been included in any of the Office suites. It is available currently in two editions, Standard and Professional.

A Macintosh version was released in July 1991 and development continued through Project 4.0 for Mac in 1993. In 1994, Microsoft stopped development of most of its Mac applications and did not offer a new version of Office until 1998, after the creation of the new Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit the year prior. The MacBU never released an updated version of Project, and the prior version from 1993 does not run natively on Mac OS X.

Further versions were released in 1992 (v3), 1993 (v4), 1995, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. There was no Version 2 on either platform; the original design spec was augmented with the addition of macro capabilities and the extra work required to support a macro language pushed the development schedule out to early 1992 (Version 3).

The application creates critical path schedules, although critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons are available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart. Additionally, Project can recognize different classes of users. These different classes of users can have differing access levels to projects, views, and other data. Custom objects such as calendars, views, tables, filters and fields are stored in an enterprise global which is shared by all users.

Microsoft Project and Project Server are the cornerstones of the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) product. Microsoft has revealed that the next version of Microsoft Project will be featuring the Fluent user interface.

The Advantages

Effectively manage and understand project schedules
Set realistic expectations with project teams, management, and customers using Office Project to build schedules, allocate resources, and manage budgets. Understand the schedule with features such as Task Drivers for tracing the source of issues, Multiple Level Undo for testing scenarios, and Visual Cell Highlighting for automatically shading the tasks affected by a change.
Get productive quickly
The Project Guide, an interactive step-by-step planning aide, helps you quickly master the project management process. Customizable for different methodologies, this tool walks you through creating a project, assigning tasks and resources, tracking and analyzing data, and reporting results. Intuitive toolbars, menus, and other features enable you to quickly master project management fundamentals.
Leverage existing data
Office Project integrates smoothly with other Microsoft Office system programs. Build projects with a few keystrokes by converting existing task lists in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Outlook into project plans. Resources can be added to projects from Microsoft Active Directory or from a Microsoft Exchange Server address book.
Build professional charts and diagrams
Analyze and report Project data in professional reports and charts by using the Visual Reports engine, which generates templates for Visio diagrams and Excel charts based on Project data. You can share templates you build with other users. Or you can choose from a list of customizable, ready-to-use report templates.
Effectively communicate information
Easily present information in various formats according to the needs of stakeholders. You can format and print one-page schedules or other reports. Use the Copy Picture to Office Wizard to smoothly export Project data into Microsoft Office Word for formal documents, Office Excel 2007 for custom charts or spreadsheets, or Microsoft Office PowerPoint for crisp presentations.
Gain greater control of resources and finances
With Office Project, you can easily assign resources to tasks and adjust their assignments to resolve conflicts over allocations. Control finances by assigning budgets to projects and programs. Improve your cost estimates with Cost Resources.
Quickly access the information you need
You can group Project data by any predefined or custom field. This saves you time by consolidating data so you can quickly locate and analyze specific information. Easily identify changes between different versions of a project—thus, efficiently tracking scope and schedule changes.
Track projects according to your needs
A rich set of predefined or custom metrics helps you track data (percent complete, budget versus actual, earned value, and the like) relevant to your needs. You can track project performance over the project lifespan by saving project snapshots in up to 11 baselines.
Customize Office Project 2007 to your needs
Tailor Office Project specifically to your project. Choose custom display fields that integrate with your project schedule. Modify toolbars, formulas, graphical indicators, and reports. XML, Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and Component Object Model (COM) add-ins facilitate data sharing and creation of custom solutions.
Get Office Project assistance when you need it
Office Project provides a wealth of assistance to novice and experienced users. It includes a robust Help search engine, smart tags, and wizards. Further enhancements include online access (requires Internet connection) to training courses, templates, articles, and more.

Features description

Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost equals the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary tasks and finally to the project level. Resource definitions (people, equipment and materials) can be shared between projects using a shared resource pool. Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Resource rates are used to calculate resource assignment costs which are rolled up and summarized at the resource level. Each resource can be assigned to multiple tasks in multiple plans and each task can be assigned multiple resources, and the application schedules task work based on the resource availability as defined in the resource calendars. All resources can be defined in an enterprise-wide resource pool.
MS Project presumes additional physical raw materials are always available without limit. Therefore it cannot determine how many finished products can be produced with a given amount of raw materials. This makes MS Project unsuitable for solving problems of available materials constrained production. Additional software is necessary to manage a complex facility that produces physical goods.
The advance that MS Project has over other software is the fact that most companies use Microsoft Windows® based infrastructure. Also many software such as Enterprise Project and
eLabor has integrated themselves onto the MS Project.

Support for collaboration: The integration of the MS Project and MS Central front enable all the involve member to access the project using the Internet. This speed up the process for the members making the report of the project status to the manger, and vice-versa. Factors such as time and location become a minor consideration for the members. Manager will be able to view reports from the internet, have more control of the project which lead to more synergistic planning and more informed decisionmaking. Changes to the schedules and tasks can also be make faster and information dissipte more quickly. Members also will have greater flexibilities in hours need to do their tasks. Each member also has their own personal Gantt Chart.

Portfolio view: Using MS Project Central portfolio view, multiple projects can be viewed simultaneously. This enables better understand how changes in one project can affect other projects members might be working on.

Task linking: For manager, who handles very highly complex interdependent multi-tasks, this capability will prove very useful. A delay in one task will be distinctly shown, it affect on the other tasks will also be highlighted. A manager will be able to make any adjustment needed and see if the changes are sufficient to makeup for the delay.

Resource pooling: An example for this functionality is the ability to support multiple billing rates. This is especially useful in the analyze phase for the manager to make a cost-benefit proposal. Manager is able to calculate the total cost of the project using the different rates for the different resources.

Primavera SureTrak Project Manager:
It is one of the three main PM software that are widely used today.

Project KickStart^TM:
It is the main feature of the SureTrak that people widely used. It is a menu driven 8 steps interface that provides the basic or brainstorming and foreseeing problems. Users will define project phases, clarify goals, establish goals, anticipate obstacles, and delegate assignments.

Variable Timescale: feature lets users zoom in on a portion of the project timescale. This enable the user to select and zoom into certain duration (days) of the plan and still allowed the compressed view of the rest of the plan (weeks) both before and after the selection duration. The display can also be formatted to view a selected month in days and other in weeks. Pert Timescale is also used to give a better look at the sequence of interrelated tasks. With the Trace Logic window, the effect of changes such as delay on the project can be seen.

Better display for the activity attributes: Using the different patterns and color for the different activity attributes, project managers can clearly show the valuable project details and status for analysis. This is much easier to communicate than to have all the detail in words and numbers.

Users will be able to analyze the resource availability, produce a better report with better graphical representation of the summarizing activities based on phase, location, responsibility, resource, and other customizable codes.

Customization of reports and layout: The output can be customized to display the different color for the different day and to show a clear distance in each phase. Layouts and reports can be saved as HTML for web publishing and allow members to view on the Internet.

IMSI TurboProject:
is one of the projects that are compatible with the Microsoft Project products. This major feature has been one of the major selling points for the software.

Compatible with MS products: The ability to work with the MS Project .MPD files allow the sharing of the project information with the users of the MS Project.

Data can be exported directly to Microsoft excel:
Since TurboProject is closely integrated with the Microsoft Product; many features that are commonly in MS are applicable to TurboProject too. The major function is that data can be exported directly to MS Excel. The output can be formatted to graphical display such as tables, bars, profiles, and spreadsheets.

Varieties of templates for data to be exported in HTML: There are many preformatted templates available for the Layouts and reports in TurboProject to be published, and exported in HTML. The data can be published on the internal intranet or Internet for the client to view the progress too. Users can upload, distribute, view, print, and share project files with entire team via the Internet, regardless of whether they have the software.

Resource Usage View: There are 51 curves of different patterns available as tools for the users to represent the each resource in the Resource Usage View. Resources can be grouped by hierarchy and criteria such as department, category, skill, and job description. Using the Gantt pane, the spreadsheet will show what resources are assigned to that activity and the detail of that activity. Users will have the capability to evaluate if the resource allocated is appropriate for that task or not.

Comparison Using MS Project And Without Using MS Project

Although it is not the best option for the beginners, Microsoft offers a best overall value, especially for users of its Office suite who are familiar with the menu structure and appearance. It also offers a richer set of Web-based remote access features. The graphical indicators can take the place of data for spotting potential problems. The greater collaboration will enable a better teamwork and analyze the problem. Members can participate in the discussion with all the different views shared simultaneously. Network diagram which is an improvement of PERT chart, will enable new filtering and layout option. With the use of Gantt chart, it can show each member's chart or multiple members' on each project. MS Project is a very powerful PM software which pack many tools compared to others allowing for flexible analysis by; allow the creation of task specific calendar, deadline will be indicate if the task will not be finish on time, resource sheet allow better manage of different resources in a task, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a collection of codes that corresponds to the hierarchical structure for the tasks in a project, and Contour Resource Availability which defining the available unit over times for resource group.

The SureTrak's extensive use of wizards makes it moderately easier to learn than MS Project. It is design more as an entry level for the users to the project management software. The wizard helps to provide a framework for brainstorming and problem identification. The PERT view allow for easier modification to the workflow. The integrated scalability should most appeal to large organizations that do not want to implementation a large scale PM software. However, SureTrak does not have as many powerful tools as MS Project. Most of the tools in SureTrak are menu driven so it is easier to navigate but lack the ability to be flexible.

TurboProject compare to other non-MS PM software has the advantage of the ability to exchange data with MS Project. Its main selling point is the 51 patterns for the resources compared to 24 that MS Project offered. This allow for better analysis of the resources use for each task and detail of that activity. Users are able to analyze the cost-benefit easier for that task. It seems that TurboProject put much effort into making their 51 lines their competitive advantage. To make using the curves easier, curve templates can be selected from the dropdown list in the Property Templates toolbar. However, one draw back for this software is that the project can not schedule in units as small as hours

Enhancements

In later versions of Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project's capabilities were extended with the introduction of Microsoft Office Project Server and Microsoft Project Web Access. Project Server stores Project data in a central SQL-based database, allowing users to display and update this data over the Internet. Web Access allows authorized users to access a Project Server database across the Internet, and includes timesheets, graphical analysis of resource workloads, and administrative tools.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 is tightly integrated with Windows SharePoint Services, for each project is created in Project Workspace where the team members can share information related to Project.
As the software operates as part of the Microsoft Office suite, the later versions also provide for cross-functionality with products like PowerPoint and Visio.

Understand and control project schedules and finances

Effectively track and analyze projects with a better understanding of the schedule and impact of changes. Benefit from better financial control and richer analytics.

Quickly determine factors that are affecting task dates and easily trace the source of issues to promote accountability. Task Drivers help you determine the factor (such as task dependency, calendar constraints, schedule date, or vacation time) driving the start date of the task, so you can follow a chain of factors back to find the root cause of a particular delay.
It will automatically highlight all items that shift as a result of the most recent change you make.
Undo and redo changes to views, data, and options with Multiple Level Undo. You can undo actions or sets of actions from macros too, so you can test several what-if scenarios in order to fully understand the implications of each choice while making scope changes.

With Multiple Level Undo you can safely experiment with various what-if scenarios.

With the budget field, you can assign budgets to projects and programs. The new "Cost" resource type improves cost estimation and tracking. Other cost enhancements include more predefined fields, such as cost code, that map to financial fields tracked in project accounting systems.
Flexible project tracking and analysis. Compute and track core metrics unique to your project by defining custom fields based on your formulas. Graphical indicators can alert you when specific conditions are met.

Effectively communicate and present project information

Improve the organization of your projects and people with the scheduling power and capabilities of Office Project. Easily report and communicate information in various formats according to the needs of stakeholders.