Project management

[Glenn Crumpley <gcrumpley -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM>]

I've used many project management packages and currently use MS Project.
Although I'm sure people select it for different reasons, I chose it because
it is highly customizable, both directly within the program and through the
Visual Basic language included with the product.  It integrates very well
with Excel for developing custom applications.  It is not perfect, and out
of the box has some significant shortcomings.

I believe most people choose it because it gets good reviews in the computer
press.  I also believe that most people purchasing project management software
have no training in formal project management methods and therefore usually
cannot make a comprehensive technical comparison of the available products.
Most people just want to enter dates and get pretty Gantt charts.  MS Project
makes this very easy to do and I think this accounts for most of it's popularit
y.

As for its shortcomings, I am personally familiar with what I consider a
very serious design problem when using resource-driven scheduling.  As
delivered, the program simply does not perform the duration calculations
correctly when resources are added and removed.  Curiously, when I called
technical support about this they could offer no help.  However, when I
took the extreme measure of sending Email directly to Bill Gates about the
problem, I got a response from the product manager informing me that the
product ships with a macro that corrects this problem.  For anyone interested,
the macro is called Effort_Driven and should be installed on the
Resource toolbutton and menu to somewhat correct the problem.

I'd be glad to discuss experiences with this and other project management
tools if anyone is interested.


Glenn Crumpley