Microsoft Project

Question

Is Microsoft Project the best tool for managing software development or IT projects or is there an alternative that is better?

Answer 1

We use Acunote at my work place, but we follow a Agile/Scrum methodology.

What constitutes the "best tool" depends on many things. How you run your projects, who will be using them, etc.

Answer 2

There are many better alternatives, at least for software development. One such is embedded in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. You may also want to check out tools from Rally Software and Version One. The latter are well suited to agile methods, while the former supports both agile and traditional CMM methods.

Answer 3

Depends on the process you're using - if it's a waterfall like process, or there's a lot of non-software parts of the project (infrasstructure, manufacturing, marketing etc) then Project's OK for the overall task management - it's certainly competitive with other similar tools.

I don't think any of the "project management" tools (tasks, WBS, gannt charts etc) are much good at the management of the detailed tasks that happen when you're into the main software development phase - I usually end up in Excel for the projects I'm involved in.

And of course, there is much more to the successful management of a non-trivial software project than the bit that can be managed with a tool like Project. It doesn't help much with managing the requirements, issues, defects, meetings, test development etc - but then it's not supposed to.

Because of these limitations, I find I usually get most value out of Project in the planning phase - working out the task breakdown, what needs to be done, and roughly what needs to happen in what order.

As Eisenhower put it: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." MS Project is a useful tool for planning.

Answer 4

Project is not good for managing development at all. I find it marginally useful for scheduling / work breakdown.

If you're on a Microsoft stack, Team Foundation Server is a good project management solution. It integrates with Project for scheduling and also provides the essentials of source control, work item (task / defect) tracking, and document management (via sharepoint.) The 2008 version has matured nicely, and the 2010 version looks very promising, especially in the area of requirements specification and traceability.

You can replicate the TFS features with a stack of open source and/or less expensive off-the-shelf software, but it is more work to integrate. It's debatable which is more flexible and easier to maintain once set up.

The following are required, regardless of platform:

• Bug tracking
• Work item / story / progress tracking of some kind (may be managed by above)
• Collective team discussion (may be managed by above - discussion on work items, like FogBugz for example)
• Source control (anything but SourceSafe)
• Continuous build integration that runs unit tests
• Instant messaging (OpenFire works great if your network blocks external services)
• Document library
• Farm of virtualized test machines (especially useful for install/upgrade testing)

Answer 5

Well, given the fact that not even the Project team uses Project for Project (Source: Joel Spolsky), I would not want to use it for development.

I track my development tasks in our Bug Tracker, and the Project File just has something like "Planning 1 Week, Development 5 Weeks, QA 3 Weeks, Deployment 1 Week", aka. a VERY broad overview.

As for the BugTracker, FogBugz has this nice Estimate-Tracking that I find quite useful for making schedules, which is for me just another reason to not use Project.

But then again, I am not a Project Manager, so to me, Project is just an unnecessary complex, not really multi-user friendly and somewhat dated-feeling Tool to be used when building Houses, Highways or Space Stations, but not for Software.

Answer 6

If also need a free and open alternative to Project, you have OpenProj: http://openproj.org/openproj

Answer 7

I tend to use MSProject for capacity planning - a nice big broad brush of who could do what over a period, at a level of abstraction that makes it easy to rejig plans. For day to day tracking of the real work, I use Fogbugz. I think of it as MSProject/Gantty stuff for the strategic planning, and Fogbugz for the tactical management and planning.

Answer 8

We use Primavera on my project. Its supposed to be great although its the only tool I haven't really used for project management so far so I can't really compare it to anything else. Its not that easy to pick up but it can do everything I need (and apparently much more).

My favourite feature is the built in timesheets functionality which means my developers can book their hours to their tasks at the end of the week meaning that I don't need to constantly bug them about how they are progressing against their plans.

Answer 9

We use Target Process here. It has a few "-isms", but overall is a good agile project management tool

Answer 10

We've been successfully using MS Project for planning but were missing the ability to share MS Project plans with customers and colleagues who don't have it installed. This led us to the idea of online Microsoft Project viewer - a service that would allow to view and share MS Project files (.mpp) online, apart from MS Project:

Hope this helps.

Answer 11

I've been using MS project standard for IT project management and it works best for me. It really matters how efficient you are at using such project management software. One must undergo ms project training to utilize different tools and features effectively. You can get more details on MS project course at http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/default.aspx

Answer 12

personally i dont believe ms project is good for software dev (i have used it, im not bashing it to be a purist)

its great if you are building a house or something which doesnt have such uncontrollable variables (e.g. how many bugs will you have? how long will bugs take to fix? how much feature-creep will there be?)

i like to keep my schedules very simple so more people can understand them, hence why i just use a google spreadsheet

the structure i use is described further here: Project Schedules with Google Spreadsheets

hope this helps

--LM

Answer 13

Using Microsoft project for project scheduling and tracking, earlier was using project 2007 and now started using 2010. Had undergone Microsoft project course for better understanding of latest features. Business intelligence and reporting features are significant..would like to utilize them in practice. Feel very comfortable to use Microsoft's project management solutions and prefer this over other project management system softwares.