Advantages of Using Microsoft Project

• Maturity: Microsoft Project is a very mature Project Management tool. MS Project was first released in 1984 and over the next 26 years, Microsoft has listened to the increasing number of Project Managers adopting this tool, and added/enhanced a lot of features that are now vital for managing projects. Almost any chart the Project Manager can think of is now available in MS Project. (At the time of writing this article, the current version is MS Project 2007).
• Support and Reliability: Contrary to the myriad of the other Project Management tools available on the market, Microsoft Project is developed by the largest and most reputable software company in the world, which offers reliable support of this product. Additionally, the success of MS Project has spurred the growth of third party support and training services offered for this product.
• Easy Integration with other Microsoft Products: MS Project offers integration with other MS Products that are highly popular, such as MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Outlook.
• Desktop Application: MS Project is a desktop application, which means the Project Manager can work on the project schedule even if there is no Internet connection.

Disadvantages of Microsoft Project

• Steep Learning Curve: MS Project is a software that needs some considerable training and experience to get know how to use it. This is a significant setback for the product as there are lots of Project Managers out there who are not technical, and may experience a hard time trying to learn MS Project.
• Generic Focus: MS Project does not focus on any particular industry (though some say it’s slightly more inclined to Software Project Management), this results in Project Managers using a tool that is not tailored to their needs.
• No collaboration: This is a major drawback in MS Project because of the importance of communication in Project Management. Online collaboration nowadays is indispensable for easy and accessible updates by the team members/the Project Manager/the stakeholders on the project. The complete absence of real collaboration in MS Project makes it outdated by the standards of today’s connected world. To make things worse, MS Project does not even offer integration with third party collaboration tools, which leaves Project Managers with no choice then to use a separate collaboration platform to ease the communication flow on the project. This adds an unecessary overhead to the workload of the Project Manager.
• Desktop, Offline Application: Although this one was mentioned as an advantage, it is also a huge disadvantage. Using a desktop application means that the project data file (usually the one with the .mpp extension) is stored locally. This leaves the ever-busy Project Manager with the responsibility of backing up this file always (not doing so may risk losing all the project plan in the blink of an eye in case the Project Manager’s PC fails). Additionally, quite often multiple people (e.g. the Project Manager, some team members, and some stakeholders) will have different copies of the MS Project file which are not in sync, leading to inconsistency issues (MS Excel has also the same issue when used as a Project Management tool). The Project Manager will be forced to email the project file to everyone involved every time a change is made.
• Compatibility Issues: MS Project files are saved in a proprietary format, meaning they won’t run on any other PC unless that PC has also (usually the same or a later version of) MS Project installed. This makes the life of the Project Manager harder as he has to make sure that everyone (including the stakeholders, the client, and the team members) receiving a copy of the .mpp has to have MS Project installed on his PC. An alternative way is to send the Project Plan as an image or a pdf file, but of course, both of these options are not as good as sending the real project plan.

Conclusion

MS Project is a mature, respected, and robust Project Management software, but the steep learning curve and the complete lack of collaboration may hinder future adoption of MS Project. It Microsoft doesn’t acknowledge the importance of implementing easy collaboration in this tool as well as addressing the other problems mentioned above, then MS Project may become obsolete in a few years.

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Advantages of Online Project Management Software

• Centralized Data: The data is stored on the server, not on someone’s PC. This means any updates to the data by team members or the Project Manager can be seen immediately by the rest of the team.
• Up-to-date status reporting: Since the data is centralized, and updates are instantaneous, then all the people involved in the project will benefit from an up-to-the-minute status reporting on the project, which is extremely important for the stakeholders.
• Collaboration: Collaboration is the heart of what is now called “Project Management 2.0“. Team members (from different parts of the world in case of multi-national project/organization) will be able to communicate, and discuss certain tasks in real time under the supervision and the participation of the Project Manager, as well as some stakeholders, such as the client.
• Email Notifications: Since an online Project Management Software is usually integrated with a mail server, it is easy to instantly notify team members/stakeholders/project managers about important events, such as changes to the project.
• Compatibility with other PM Tools: Nowadays, most online Project Management tools are compatible with each other, so if the organization is not satisfied with the services of one company, then it is very easy to move to another one offering similar services. All that is there to do is to export the data from the first company’s tool and then import it into the second’s. There seems to be a certain standard that all these companies are following with the way data is being stored. (Note: Make sure that the export format is compatible with the second company prior to moving).
• Access Control Lists: You only want a certain team member to have access only to a couple of tasks on the project, easily done. Intuitive access control lists allow the Project Manager to easily control who has access to what. Generally, access control lists work by individuals and by groups (for example: development team, design team, executives, etc…)
• Ease of use: Almost all online PM tools on the market are very easy to use: there is almost no learning curve (contrary to the offline tools) for the Project Manger, the team members, and senior management (overseeing the overall progress of the project).
• Backups: Backups are extremely important when it comes to project data. Most companies offer nightly backups as part of any plan, and they keep backups for the last 2 weeks. Additionally (again in most cases), the backup of the project data is redundant (e.g. the backup is duplicated on several servers).

Disadvantages of Online Project Management Software

• Some basic Project Management functionality missing: Including Gantt charts, resource leveling, etc…
• Unavailable when there is no Internet connection: Though it seems odd in this day and age to worry about this, there are still a lot of rural areas where Internet connection is simply not available, and when this is the case, it becomes impossible for the Project Manager to work on the project.
• Security and privacy concerns: This is a very legitimate concern for all high profile companies; these companies are reluctant to have their project data (including the project plan and associated critical documents) on a 3rd party server, where the only guarantor of the security and the privacy is the 3rd party company itself.
• No compatibility with offline PM Software: Online PM Software is unfortunately not compatible with its offline counterpart, for example, MS Project. Hence, moving data back and forth is not possible, and some Project Managers end up spending a lot of time updating the data in both software (online and offline).
• Potential distraction: Team members receiving constant notifications about the project, or discussing some other functionalities (that they have nothing to do with) with other team members, are easily distracted. The Project Manager has to communicate and involve the concerned team members only for any task (e.g. a team member working on the development of the core of a software product needs not to be notified about the design progress of the project, and certainly needs not to discuss it).

Although Online Project Management Software is not quite mature yet in terms of functionality, security, and privacy, it is an avenue well worth exploring, as this where Project Management is heading: more and more collaboration. A company not benefiting from this emerging trend will soon find itself outdated and will have to reconsider its Project Management culture to be more aligned with today’s connected world, or perish.

Note: Both the advantages and the disadvantages are not listed in order of importance.

© 2010 Project Management Learning – Reproduction of this material is strictly prohibited without the written consent of Project Management Learning.

The advantages of using Excel to manage projects are:

• No learning curve: Almost any Project Manager is familiar with Excel and can easily create a reliable project schedule using this tool.
• Document compatibility: Most people have Excel installed on their PC, so a schedule made in Excel can easily be read and updated by the project team members.
• Simplicity: Excel spreadsheets are very easy to read and understand by anyone.

The disadvantages of using Excel to manage projects are:

• Excel was never meant to be a Project Management tool, and thus lacks some very basic features such as Gantt charts and task dependencies.
• To account for the lack of task dependencies and other Project Management activities in Excel, some considerable (usually complicated) scripting is often needed and/or 3rd party component installation.
• Even in small projects, change requests do come in, and Excel has a notorious reputation when it comes to accommodating change requests in the already approved schedule.
• Excel is a decentralized desktop application, team members and stakeholders have always to ask for the latest copy of the project schedule from the Project Manager whenever they want to consult it (which can create an extra burden on the Project Manager, not to mention the time wasted for people waiting for that document to initiate an activity or take a decision) as opposed to viewing the latest schedule on the local intranet or online in specialized PM tools.
• Again, since Excel is a desktop application, it is completely out of touch with where Project Management is currently heading: more and more collaboration and transparency.

Conclusion

One could go with the mentality of using Excel to manage small to medium projects in order to produce a fast and easy project schedule (while it’s really not slower in specialized tools; the Project Manager just needs to learn to how to use these tools), however, once the Project Manager starts working on dependencies, and starts seeing those changes creeping in, and, of course, witnessing how the Excel sheet is changing from a project schedule to an unreadable document full of notes, the obvious fact will prevail: Excel is just not made for Project Management, and thus, should not be used to manage projects, no matter how small they are.

© 2009 Project Management Learning – Reproduction of this material is strictly prohibited without the written consent of Project Management Learning.

Advantages

• Employees do not report to multiple managers. Each employee will report to his direct functional manager. This will reduce communication channels.
• Employees tend to learn from each other since those with the same specialty (or set of skills) are grouped together.

Disadvantages

• No one “manages” a certain project, a project is managed by multiple functional managers, this can lead to the following:
  • The client is not able to know what the status of the project really is, as no one can give him the whole picture. Each functional manager is able to report on his part of the project.
  • Conflicts between functional managers can have drastic effects on the progress of a project.
• Employees tend to spend a significant percentage of their time with nothing to do, sometimes literally begging for work.

© 2009 Project Management Learning – Reproduction of this material is strictly prohibited without the written consent of Project Management Learning.