Microsoft Project Reviews

It's my day-to-day software.

I use it for my projects. I handle the portfolio. I have multiple projects and I need to monitor those projects and generate reports and consolidate everything.

The functionality is great. 

Microsoft Project is good overall. However, I especially like the reporting tools, which are visual tools and offer visual reports. The visual reports is what I like about Microsoft Projects.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

The Gantt set needs to be improved. The grid lines needs to be more interactive.

The Cloud version has far more advanced features in it. I haven't hands on it yet, however, I have seen the product, and it has all the enhancements that are required.

I've been using the solution for 15 years now. 

It is a stable, reliable solution. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have about 100 people on the solution. 

The company is now starting to use the cloud version. They stopped implementing any other versions. Once we migrate to the Cloud version, then we have to see how it's going to compliment us in terms of scaling.

I've not contacted the call center or the support center for any support. I go on the community website and try to find it to see if I can find any kind of troubleshooting steps there, and I manage issues on my own.

I used Primavera previously. 

Primavera is not user friendly, and has no support on the database types. It requires certain a format to be implemented. There are many differences between these two solutions. For a billing or for operational use, Primavera definitely doesn't really suffice.

The setup was straightforward and not as complex as Primavera or any other project management tool.

When it comes to the on-prem deployment of the older versions, you don't usually get the results, you don't find it online. They are not readily available. We need to get into the third party applications and download the third party results. From there on, it's a marathon to install. The cloud version is easier. 

There's not really any maintenance needed. 

I used my administrator during the implementation. I asked him to assist me.

I don't have very much information in terms of pricing. However, it is a necessary tool for us and therefore whether it's cheap or expensive for us.

I'm not sure as to if we need to pay for any extras or deal with ancillary fees. 

We are partners with Microsoft. 

I'm working with the 2019 version at this point. 

I'd advise users to go for the cloud version. It's easier to deploy and share. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We use Microsoft Project to plan our projects, including some tasks that we need to accomplish. We use JIRA as well. We use a lot of tools to plan our jobs.

The user interface is simple and it helps me in planning what needs to be accomplished.

I am a regular user and for me, it is perfect. I would love to see a mind map feature where you can draw some diagrams of the project. Then you can connect ideas and watch them on a map.

I have been using Microsoft Project for more than five years.

We use a cloud solution and it is transparent for us. We have the perfect client and it saves the data.

I have no idea about the cost because it is a corporate decision. 

I would rate Microsoft Project a nine 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 primarily use the solution for managing projects. 

The ability to create tasks and structure them and give them hierarchy. 

They now have MS project Online and they have two levels, so it's easier to access what you need and to choose specifically what you'll use. You can start at a lower level, for example, and be more cost-effective and move up if it suits you.

It's easy to set up.

I don't have any comments on where it can be improved. 

The full suite would be pretty expensive.

I've used the solution for many years. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution scales well. It's not an issue. 

We're a small organization with a few people using it. 

The solution is simple to set up. It's not overly complex. Especially now, after working with it for so many years, it's very easy.

It's an online tool. From that perspective, there is no maintenance needed.

The pricing is good. You can start at a lower tier and move up as needed. It's reasonably priced to start.

I cannot recall the exact costs. It's comparable to other similar products. 

It would be more expensive all in all as some of the competitors will have more features and other bells and whistles that would not be available with the basic tool of Microsoft, which would be cheaper. If you want a full suite, it will be more expensive.

I'm just a customer and end user.

It would be a straightforward option for people who are already using the Microsoft suite, including Office 365. If you're not a Microsoft shop, it's probably not your tool.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten based on the cost and features on offer. 

We actually help and assist organizations in implementing their processes, and workflows to this particular product. Suppose you want to go on the enterprise environment, then you have your own process flows, your own workflows, your own forms and configurations, your user set and your resourcing. With this solution, we can help you configure the system.

We have implemented four domains like telecom, construction, banking, insurance, health sector and pharmaceuticals. We have worked, to some extent, in each of these domains. Of course the customization, configuration and implementation varies from user to user requirements as to how they want to, and to what extent they want to do it. For example, currently I'm working for a manufacturing domain. They wanted to implement this particular thing because they want me to monitor their projects, which is running into multiple verticals within the organization and we're unable to gauge as to exactly where we are with the project status, and how we are aligned with the resourcing and the costing part.

They have their own set of workflows and processes. We help them create that within the Project Online environment, configure their process, their workflows, their information, and all the project related documentation. It's based on the SharePoint environment.  Everything that you can do within the SharePoint environment is available here as well. So content management can be configured, as per the needs and configurations and workflows.

Of course, the reporting part is a key essential for any organization. You can build your dashboards, your reports, you have a support of actual reports. You have support for PowerPoint reports, power builder. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but all of this is supported by the environment. So you can have all the dynamic reporting and dashboards as per your requirements.

Most importantly, there are three aspects that I have seen most beneficial:

• Project tracking: This really helps the users as to where they are with each of the projects, and what are the satatus details within those projects. 

• Resource utilization: Most of the time you do not know how your resources are aligned. You cannot take up projects because you do not know whether this set of resources are available to you within that particular time frame. If you have all your resources within the enterprise environment, just one click and you are able to see that this resource is available during a specific time. So, I can pick up this project and assign this resource.

• Cost: Most of the time, we're unable to note exactly how much cost has gone into the project, because some of the numbers go into the documents that we put in, but the real numbers are really not captured all the time. Here, you will be able to capture your manpower cost, your material costs, your travel costs, and any other costs that's associated with your project and see that as direct impact on your project progress. Half of the time you might have a certain budget for it, but because of mismanagement within the project, the increase of scope and other such reasons, you end up spending more than what the budget really was approved for you. You are able to capture and see: financial status, usual status and project status.

So far I haven't faced any issues with scalability because everything that we have wanted to achieve, we've been able to. It is a scalable product. I've worked in multiple domains, and each domain has its own set of requirements.

We have close to like 5,000 all users. That was a really huge implementation, and we had to get into a firm deployment and that went on to like 14 servers also, because there were so many services and so many other things that you needed to put in place, and of course give it to high availability and high performance also.

Usually we have this onsite and offshore supports in place. At the onset we prefer an onsite support because that's more like filling in the knowledge gaps that the users will face, because they do not know the environment, they do not know the working of that environment. Then with the stability as the time moves, like a month or two months down the line, we turn it into an onsite offshore support with reduction of resources. That's totally based on your other kind of user base you have. Like for example, currently I am catering to a user base of approximately 1,000 up people and we are doing an onsite offshore support. A few people are placed on site to help the user immediately take care of their concerns, and some people are working at the offshore to take care of whatever comes into the hill test environment and then manage that. This depends on the organization's requirements, but you have both the models available. The response has been really wonderful.

It's a straightforward deployment. If you're going into a Project Online, you don't have to do any setup. It's just the basic configuration, which I will be connecting to your active directory to pick up your resources, and I will be configuring the environment for role security permission and stuff. Then of course, the custom information like your verticals, your divisions and stuff that you want to align your projects with. So the configuration is very easy. Of course, only if you want to bring your own workflows and customization into the environment. That's the development rule, but even those development periods are not very long. Like four months, five months is max that we get into. After that, just mostly support and enhancement.

There has been a lot of improvement in terms of the return on investment for ordinary resources, as well as the costing. We were able to see that the same project which they completed earlier in six months, now they could timeline and complete within like three and a half months time, or four months time with the better utilization of resources. Along with that, they were able to have their projections also in place, that pipeline also in place. Like you don't just have the projects in here, you also have the concept of proposals in here. So automatically, you know that these products are in the pipeline in form of proposals, and they will be executed within the timeline. 

The standard diversion of Project Online or Microsoft Project, is that it automatically has so many built in features that you really do not need to invest much in terms of trying to configure it to suit your requirements. It has all the standard practices, built in practices, all the pin book concepts already aligned within the product.

There are some serious competitors in this sector. For instance, there is Clarity from CA, Planview and  HP PPM. These are some of the other competitors that you have on the market. I think the Microsoft products are very user friendly, the ease-of-use is an asset.

The only drawbacks are the customization. Generally what happens is everybody wants it to be an automation tool, and this is not the use case for this solution. It is a platform for project management. You don't want an automation to be in place.  The system does not do it automatically because you as a project manager are expected to see that the input received, the status received from your team members is correct and accurate. Then that information is available for the rest of the team. You don't want that to be automated. So when the user comes back from this kind of mindset that everything should get automated, then no. I will not suggest that because this is management, this is project management.

This is not an automation tool, although to a very large extent, a lot of things can be automated to workflows in other ways. If that is your requirement, might as well go and build a custom tool yourself if that's what you're looking for. Then even that won't help you because project management is so related to so many other things that you'll not be able to encompass that all within the environment. You won't be able to think of that. I have been working with Microsoft for 18 years now. Obviously, their experience and understanding of project management would any day be more than any other solution.

My primary use case is to take advantage of Microsoft Project Server to plan and track program project work at an enterprise level. Particularly, to enable tracking of actual project and program costs across multiple business lines.

The look and feel is familiar for users of the Microsoft Office Suite of applications. It is pretty straightforward to use. If you are not from a professional scheduling background, you could open it up and you would see how to do some pretty basic things without too much training.

It's most useful feature is that it interfaces with Project Server which enables a whole portfolio or enterprise perspective across the organization.

Project Professional is a powerful tool with many features and functions available for an experienced scheduler with advanced scheduling knowledge and skills. One primary problem that we have is that users that are new to project management and scheduling find it a little overwhelming when they are first introduced to the tool, particularly when they are introduced to features required to enable enterprise level planning and reporting. 

To address this, we are creating a trial of custom views that mask some of the complexity involved to enable project cost estimates, effort records and resource assignments to be consumed at an enterprise level. Some people find having to fulfill enterprise level task and resource assignment rules a little overwhelming and frustrating when all they want to do is a simple project plan.

I haven’t experienced any stability issues with Project Professional client – problems can however occur on the server side depending on the number of custom fields used, and number and nature of dependencies created by multiple users in a single master schedule with links embedded in multiple project records.

Some users can create some very convoluted inter-dependencies and schedule conflicts that can impact performance of reporting at an enterprise level.

We have around 700 active projects and over 4,000 users, at times the product is slow – this is often a result of insufficient server capacity.

At present, we have in-house tech support. We really on Microsoft Partners with Project Server and Sharepoint Server experience for support occasionally.

I have had experience using Primavera and Open Plan Professional previously. I personally find Project Professional to provide the same functionality from logic and scheduling perspective.

The packaging of Microsoft Project Professional for enterprise use is relatively straight forward. The end-to-end enterprise implementation with Project Server is complex. Most of the complexity is on the people and process side of set-up for an enterprise rather than for a single project.

I am not involved with this.

My suggestion is to do  homework and compare what other products are out there and how well they will fit with your organisation. This one's okay. I've personally used a range of different products, all potentially good choices, it just depends on the operating context and culture of the organization whether it's going to fit, or not. 

Our use cases are all related to project management and I've actually developed project schedule templates that support both the standard waterfall and all different aspects of project lifecycle management including Agile and Scrum.

Microsoft Project is used as the basis for all the tracking and monitoring that we do for the projects. Everything from staffing resource plan to estimates for work completion and estimates for the project completion. It's all integrated in that way. We also have developed a capability to have interlock tasks that work across schedules. We can look at one schedule and determine whether or not we're being impacted by another project. From those standpoints, integration coordination is key.

The reporting features are quite strong. Being able to do team reports and find out what work is pending, what work needs to be done are key in my day-to-day management of the team. The earned value analysis capabilities and critical path capabilities inside the tool help me make sure that I'm keeping the projects on track.

When you start getting into the more advanced features, it can become unstable. The more you use the advanced features, the more exposure you have to an unanticipated result. I think we need to add the Kanban Board capability to the product that would help them advance that board into the project management methodology that's being used in the industry today. Being able to depend on Scrum management is key. I actually developed a template that allows me to do that, but if they actually productized that, that would help.

I have been using Microsoft Project for 20 years. 

When using the standard features, it's fairly innocuous at that point, it works as intended.

We used shared resource pools and we have multiple project schedules linked into the shared resource pool using Project Server. At that point, if you have a project schedule that is open and you are using a resource pool but you haven't properly baselined that that project schedule, the cascade of change can span across multiple project schedules. That's actually dangerous. What Microsoft may want to do is put an alert in the application that tells you that you're linked to an active, shared resource pool. You are making a change inside your schedule that could impact other project schedules. Similarly, they need to do that based on updates. Then if you were linking into that same resource pool with a schedule, it should come up with an alert that says that changes have taken place. It doesn't do that.

Scalability is like anything. If you're doing fine tasks inside the tool, you can get into a multi-thousand line schedule. When you start dealing with schedules at that level, it's inherently complex. 

Mostly project managers use it. We also have business analysts and other team members who in several instances may be able to go in. I don't do this with my teams because I want to be accountable to the team and make sure that the schedule is up to date and that it's accurately representing the work that's being performed. I use a timesheet entry approach and actually collect data from the team and enter that data into the project schedule. I've got one point of entry and one point of failure. I do know there are other project managers that are out there that allow their teams to go in and update their time in their tasks. I've seen that both work successfully and I've seen it cause significant issues so I prefer to hold onto the control myself that way.

They used to have a very robust help capability and I found that to be quite useful. They cut back on that now. I find that some of the support that was in the product before has not been kept up to the same level. Then we find ourselves having to reach out to the internet and looking for help texts out there from other users. That becomes then less professional. I'd recommend that they continue to upgrade and maintain the in-product help capabilities.

I've had very good support and I've had the support that's been frustrating. I would rate them a seven out of ten. 

I've had exposure to Clarity and several of the other products that are out there. TFS itself as a squiggle management tool.

In terms of the initial setup, if you're using it as a fairly basic tool, it's fairly straightforward. When you start getting into the more complex tools and the features of the product, it becomes harder to use. That's to be expected. You have to have knowledge of the tool to be able to use it properly.

It is a mainstay product. A lot of people use that as their first introduction and it's not meant to be a project management ERP solution, like Life Clarity or the others but it is a capable product that establishes a framework and a basis that can be used across the industry.

I would rate Microsoft Project a seven out of ten because you'd have to have in-depth knowledge of the tool for it to really be beneficial to you. It also allows the new developers and new project managers to come in and be proficient and be able to develop schedules fairly readily. From that standpoint, it's fairly strong. From the overall usability of the product, it can be cumbersome.

We use Microsoft Project to develop IT projects for a pharmaceutical company. It helps us coordinate between teams of developers and admins. 

Microsoft Project is easy to use and helps our teams visualize the evolution of our projects.

The Microsoft license is relatively expensive. 

I have used MS Project for about five years.

I rate MS Project nine out of 10 for stability.

MS Project is scalable. Twenty-five people in my company

We had another project management solution, but we switched to Project when the company adopted 365.

Installing Microsoft Project is effortless. The initial installation took me about two or three days. It was easy to install after I took the online courses. I didn't need an integrator or a consultant. 

I rate Microsoft Project nine out of 10.