Is Microsoft Project Worth It 2021? | Mercury Solutions

The project management discipline has become a one-niche practice across the businesses and diverse industries in these recent years. And Microsoft project stands as one of the most popular running application.
 

A keynote in favor of this application, its features, advantages, and learnings has been briefed here.

It is the Microsoft’s most popular project management software. Being the company’s windows based application, it has become the dominant PC-based project management software.
 

The application assists the project managers to plan, assign resources, keep a track of the progress, manage the budget, analyze the workload, and, more.  
 

It is available in Editions, Standard, and, Professional format.
 

It creates the critical path schedules and the schedule chain is visualized in the Gantt chart. Third party add-ons could also be integrated like the Spherical Angle or the ProChain.
 

Microsoft stands as the major manufacturer of the project software in terms of volume, revenue, price, and gross margin as per the Global Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Software Market Report 2018.
 

Out of 200 US-based project managers, three quarters are involved in small and midsize businesses. Among them, more than 67% use Microsoft Project.
 

It is used in most of the industries including manufacturing, Government, retail, construction, pharmaceuticals, government, financial services, healthcare, and, etc.
 

Microsoft Project Features and Benefits:

Features of Microsoft Project:
 

A few of the significant Microsoft Project features have been listed below.
 

• Creation of budgets depending on the resource rates and work assignment.
• Calculation of the cost equivalent to the work times allotted, that rolls up to task and project level.
• The sharing of people, equipment, and materials between the projects is made easy using the shared resource pool.  
• All resources can have their independent calendars defining the days and night shifts availability.
• The resource assignment costs are calculated and summarized at the individual level too.
• Assign multiple tasks for a single resource.
• Assign each task to multiple resources.
• Recognize the different levels and categories of the users.
• Permit access as per the differing levels of the users.

Moreover, additional software could be added on to create critical path schedules, event chain methodology, resource leveled schedules, and, etc. The objects like the views, filters, calendars, fields, and, etc., are customized and stored in the enterprise global that is shared by all the users.
 

Advantages of Microsoft Project:
 

• Budget Management:

The prospect of the business depends on the well-planned budget and its successful delivery to earn the trust of the clients. The software helps the manager to determine the planned/actual budget and align the work. 
 

• Communication: 

The software forms a funnel for communication regarding the projects with the internal peers and externally clients, stakeholders, teammates outside the firm [if any]. 
 

• Cost-effective:

It is one of the most popular software available in the market and it is cost-effective too, for the organizations that have already invested in Office 365.
 

• Customer Satisfaction:

A satisfied customer build trust and earns returning and more new customers for any of the businesses. MS Project software is smart and facilitates the clients, suppliers, and the organizations as well to be focused on each phase of the objective and enhance the delivery with high success rate.
 

• Document Sharing:

It enables the internal and external employees or the 3rd party members to share the comprehensive documents, wireframes, and, more making the work transparent. 
 

• Informed Decision:

As all the details are leveraged in one place, it is easy to make a clear and informed decision. That is, it enhances the decision process with more accurateness.  
 

• Integration with other Microsoft tools:

The Microsoft project could be connected as a part of the Microsoft Office 365 productivity tools. This implies that there is a scope for wide spectrum usage of tools for functionalities presents other than in MS Project.  
 

• Monitoring:

The software helps to monitor the progress of the project regularly and at any phase of the development. This provides an insight into the project completion time. 

• Project Collaboration:

Usually, professionals are assigned with a part of the task from the project. This software facilitates the employees to collaborate and discuss documents, timelines, and, etc. 
 

• Project Evaluation:

The ‘what if’ scenarios could be ascertained through varied redo and undo levels. This gives an overall assessment of the project in times of modifications [if any], or extended project activities. 
 

Technical Details:
 

It supports almost all of the devices which include Windows, Android, iPhone/iPad, Web-based, and the Windows Mobile.
 

It supports the language English.
 

All types of customers like small, medium or the large businesses and the freelancers use the software across the globe.
 

It is deployed on-premise or the cloud-hosted settings.
 

how to use microsoft project:
 

• Download the software.
• Enter data into the task plan of the Gantt chart. Eg: Task name and duration.
            [You can have a quick visual of tasks represented in a blue bar in the Gantt chart].
• Name and save the project in a folder. The saved file has an extension .mpp.
• Change the start date of the project as the default date is set already.

The MS Project facilitates you to note the task dependencies that is you are not able to start another task unless and until the ongoing task gets completed.
 

How Can I Learn to Use Microsoft Project?
 

Microsoft offers a course: 55180A: Introduction to Microsoft Project 2016: Getting Started. It is of classroom training with 2 days duration for the new participants.
 

In this course, you will be able to learn the fundamental skills necessary for using the program; work with the resources; enter, organize, and, link the tasks; creation of independent projects, and basic reports.  
 

You may learn it from any of the authorized Microsoft Learning Partners available in your city.

Major Key Players:
 

The major employers include Larsen and Toubro Ltd., Infosys Ltd., Techmahindra Ltd., Shapoorji Pallonji & Co. Ltd., CBRE Group, Cognizant, and, etc.
 

As a closing note, Microsoft Project stands as the best solution for the enterprise projects. It comes with a wide range of capabilities and support and specifically designed tools to work on varied projects from the scratch.
 

Microsoft Project supports all phases of project planning, starting from resource collection, setting the budget, assigning the task, analyzing, project tracking, and, etc.
 

Microsoft Project software is to stay here.