| Love to hate this clunky yet essential product |
Project schedules for teams are most useful if the whole team feels ownership and uses the plan as a tool to get their work done. This can only happen if a master schedule is made widely available, and users or planners can filter and massage the tasks, due dates, etc. so each person sees only what is relevant to them. The alternative - firehosing a 500 line plan at 50 people - just results in user overload and rejection of the entire project management activity.
Microsoft Project Server does solve the above problem. It manages to do so in a way that is unbelievably clunky. They created a "Project Web Access" user interface that breaks all the UI ease of use rules known to man, and requires multiple days of training. Essential functions are tucked away in obscure places with ambiguous labels. Even superusers need a cheat sheet. Occasional users often just reject the system.
The complexity of the installation process is annoying. Even experienced IT people end up hip deep in IIS, credentials, inexplicably failed logons, MSDE, and a raft of turgid Microsoft documentation that doesn't actually explain how to install this system. Prepare for a multi-day trial and error torture session and give your IT tech some time off after the nightmare is over.
The only thing worse than using Microsoft Project Server to manage a project is not using anything at all. I don't know of any competitive solution that solves the problem of managing dynamic shedules over geographically distributed teams. |
3 Rating
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