Microsoft Project - Industry Standard Sofware?

[hotdiggety]

Hi,

Whenever saving my project plans to a new version, the project plans do not carry all information in the new versions. i.e. The task column data is not displayed, yet there are the minus and plus signs for tasks and subtasks. All other data in all the other columns are visible e.g. duration, start date, end date, predecessors, resource names etc. Is this a bug in MS Project 2003, or is it a memory problem in MS Project 2003?

I have 13 project plans for the one customer for one project and due to a national roll-out, have broken it up into regions. This is due to the complexities of the project or else it would have been one project plan with +/- 7000 tasks in it to manage. This would prove to be a bit of a logistical nightmare I would imagine.

I am going to investigate Primavera as a better PM tool, as quite a few PM's that I have spoken to suggest using this tool instead of using MS Project. One agreement is that for small to medium project MS Project is ideal, but as soon as the project leans more towards 500 tasks or more, use Primavera.

What are your comments on this?

Rgds,

Sean

[explorer3333]

I am using MS Project for scheduling a project with about 10000 tasks, so it is obviously not true that the MS Project has 500 tasks limitation.
In my experience, the high tech companies tend to use MS Project and other companies (construction, oil) tend to use Primavera. In our company (high tech), we use MS Project for internal development stuff and Primavera for construction related activities. So I would suggest to find out what your industry uses and go with that. One more difference (beside price). One can find a lot of educational material for MS Project and limited one for Primavera (if I am wrong on the Primavera, suggest some, because I have not found good third party educational materials).
As far as problems with MS Project. It is a mature product, I would suspect user errors first, before anything else. Having said that, there is no bug free product, but most often there are workaround.
If anyone needs to know the "best" book on MS Project (in my opinion of course): Dynamic Scheduling With Microsoft Office Project 2003. It is very opinionated, but it works.

[pmkb]

Hi explorer3333, welcome to the forum.

Paul Harris wrote several books on using Primavera software. You can find them listed in the software book review section. Would you mind posting a short review of the Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Office Project 2003 book?

[explorer3333]

I am familiar with Mr Harris books but found them mostly "useless" for work. Since "useless" is a strong term, I need to elaborate further. There are two type of books that are on the market: books that explains ALL the possible way things can be done (80% of the books on project management is written that way by people whose profession is to write books, not to manage projects), and books that explain the way things SHOULD be done (written by people who do have serious project mgmt experience). Dynamic Scheduling ... on MS Project and Construction Scheduling with Primavera Project Planner on P3 belongs to that latest category that I found useful for daily work. Too bad that only a few of this type of books are on the market. If anyone know books that are usable for daily work, please mention them. I am all for learning, but I want to learn from experience, the way things should be done, not the way things can be done.

[jblack]

Explorer3333...I could not have said it better myself!!!

With respect to useful, real world applications of MS Project, you might take look at these articles:
http://www.pmconnection.com/modules....ndex& catid=3

[harrywaldron]

Hi - Yes, MS Project is the most widely used software tool in the industry and obtaining skills and knowledge in this area would be helpful for Project Managers.

After using this for over a decade, I've found that continued practice and a couple of good books help, e.g., I like Tim Pyron's Using Microsoft Project 2002 (from Que publishing is chockful of screenshots and examples)

There are certainly a # of other good tools out there also. A PM should be a great leader, know the PM methodology, and the supporting tools. Knowing MS Project well would be helpful to PMs seeking employment opportunities in companies where this is the standard (as it is in our company for example)>

[pn_patel]

Hi Kwak,

Though there are many tools available, based on the amount of people who are aware and 'capable' of using it, I think MS project is a sure winner. However, I understand that this may not suit all the organizations and many project oriented organizations use Primavera, Planview and others.

So calling any specific tool an industry standard with limited inputs would not be wise ;-)

Cheers,

Patel

[sensu]

I have also been told there is a ‘glass ceiling’ after which MSP suffers from issues that render the tool unreliable.

I haven’t experienced such problems in the past and haven't found anything relating to it on the internet, but would be interested to hear if anybody else has.

I’m currently trying to cobble a project schedule together using MS Project 2003 and it’s looking like it will be between 2000-3000 lines when finished and would like to head any such problem off at the pass.

[explorer3333]

Glass ceiling? I have not found the glass ceiling on the stand alone version of the MS Project up to 10,000 lines (the most I used).

If you use it in a server environment, Microsoft have not tested it beyond 5000 lines, probably because it takes about 1 minute per 1,000 lines to save it. So 10,000 lines takes 10 minutes to save. Unbearable slow performance.

explorer3333

[sensu]

@explorer3333

I’m inclined to agree with you as I’ve not suffered any problems with MSP, but discussing the size of the project with other users at work, they suggested using another application.

I was just wondering whether there was any substance to their speculation and if there were any recommended guidelines e.g. up to 1000 lines use MSP, over 1000 lines use Primavera (or AN Other software).

It’s probably not the amount of lines in the schedule that will affect me anyway, it will be the size of the file!! (too many macros )