Microsoft Project Management

Microsoft Project works with other components of Microsoft Office to help create and manage project schedules, budgets, tasks, and other aspects of project management. For example, Microsoft Project can pull task items from Excel or Outlook and integrate them into a Microsoft Project file. When users update their tasks in Excel or Outlook, their links to the master task manager in Microsoft Project are also updated.

The Project Guide is a wizard built into Microsoft Project that guides a novice user through the Project file creation process step by step. The Project Guide prompts the user with questions about every aspect of a project, forcing him or her to collect and enter the data necessary to set up a comprehensive project management system.

Chart and diagram creation are functions built into Microsoft Project. So are communication and collaboration tools such as scheduling, chat, whiteboarding, and so on. Microsoft project manager software enables one to build and maintain a sophisticated project management system using tools that are already distributed among the people who will need the system.

Like most Microsoft enterprise software, Microsoft Project is incredibly complex. Its full power can be tapped only with extensive training. Microsoft project management training is provided through Microsoft partners around the world. Often, they are same partners who will be working on a software engineering project, so they are already adept with Microsoft Project.

If you need to use Microsoft Project in a hurry, the program comes with a number of Microsoft Project Management templates -- frameworks of fields and data types that generally fit classes of projects such as construction, software, business process, etc. Many such templates have been developed over the years by Microsoft Project users and made available for download on the Web. Some firms charge for templates and support in using their templates.

As part of the most widely used office productivity suite, Microsoft Project is a de facto standard tool in the project management profession. Every project management professional should have a grasp of Microsoft Project's fundamentals, and many professional project managers make Microsoft Project a central specialty of their practices.