George WhyteAirdrie, North Lanarkshire, United Kingdom
I have started evaluating this "Companion" product to Microsoft Project 2000, with some foreseeable benefits. Has anyone used this as a site wide or global resource management tool? What are your experiences (good and bad) of it's performance, ease of use, functionality? I'm also open to suggestions of any other tools that integrate with MSP2000 for resource management Saving Changes...
I have recently implement this product and trialed it in a real project.
I think the idea is good, but the software (Service Release 1) is clunky and has bugs.
Furthermore, the connection between the timesheet data and the project data happens from with MS Project, and I found this clunky too.
I would not recomend this product to anyone at this time. MS has a good thing going here, but it needs a lot of work before I would use it.
Stuart
P.S MSP 2002 is in beta and you can order a beta CD from MS - I believe there are significant improvements in this release. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
We have been using it here steadily for about 6 months. We do not use it to its full capability (the messaging between PM and team members for cultural reasons).
It is somewhat "buggy" however as a means of providing executive managers with an overview of where all schedules are at - it's been valuable. Saving Changes...
Agreeing with the previous post, you might want to look at the Beta of 2002 which is due to come on the market this year, with an improved Project Central piece (now named Project Server). You can order the beta and get new feature information from the project site:
And I'm sure you know this, but apart from functionality, user friendliness and technical considerations, tools like this are only as good as the data in the individual project files, and this in turns assumes there's compliance across the enterprise with a consistent PM process. No good giving executives internet access to project reports that show erroneous or stale data. Saving Changes...
The concept is definitely good. But as said by others, there are bugs in Project Central limiting it's use. May be 2002 version has better features. But managing a project using Project Central is much easier that using MS Project 2000 alone. All time booking activities are automated. There are various levels of people looking at the required information. Further enhancement to this product may help users liek us to a great extent. I have been using this product in my company for 4 months now. Saving Changes...
Jan SchillerPartner and Chief Project Officer| Berkshire Consulting LLCArizona, United States
For those of you using MSProject 2000/Project Central: how many projects (not just tasks) have you successfully planned, scheduled and tracked? In other words, has anyone experienced success in using it for 'enterprise' or portfolio project management? Saving Changes...
