| Articles » Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade Microsoft Project 2000 |
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Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade from Microsoft Project 98 to Project 2000 |
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| Here are ten reasons that a project manager will want to upgrade from MS Project 98 to Project 2000. |
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| 1. The New Auto-Save Feature |
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| Finally the Microsoft Project software has caught up with the rest of the Office suite of products in this area. With Project prone to crashing at the most inopportune times, this feature is a much appreciated one. It is on the Save tab under the Tools-Options menu item. I suggest setting it to no more than 5 minutes and enjoying the increased peace of mind. |
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| 2. The New Deadline Date Feature |
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Project managers need to know when a critical date in the project is in danger of being missed. Up to now, most of us have used hard constraints, such as 'Must Finish On' to highlight these situations. The problem with using hard constraints is that it can completely mess up the calculation of the critical path. I saw one example where a hard constraint caused the critical path for a 1700 task project to consist of a single task - the last project team meeting! In Project 2000, there is now a deadline date. This can be set on the Advanced tab on the Task Information dialog box. When you set this deadline date, it does not affect the critical path, but it does flag in the indicator column on the display when the scheduled date for the task is later than the deadline date. You can even search or sort by this criteria if desired.
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| 3. The New Grouping Feature |
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By adding grouping as a feature, the number and variety of reports possible from views has increased dramatically. One usage is to produce a report listing all tasks for a resource grouped by week. The resource can now better plan their time knowing how much time each week will be required for project tasks.
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| 4. The New Network Diagram View |
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One of the most useful views for a project manager when managing a project is the network diagram. This view organizes the tasks generally according to a timeline and shows the linkages between the tasks using lines and arrows. This view has replaced the PERT chart view on the quick pick view menu and is much more useful for project managers. It can also be a good view for reporting to sponsors or other management.
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| 5. The Ability to Define a Calculation for a Field |
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In the latest version of the software, you can now define a calculation for a field by using Tools-Customize-Fields. This is most often used with one of the Number fields when you want to display the results of a calculation such as adding two numeric fields. I have seen this used when the cost contingency amount is stored in one of the Number fields and then another Number field can be defined as Cost+Contingency, which allows the variance calculation to then be done against the cost including contingency.
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| 6. The New Material Resource Type |
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| Up to this version of the software, the only type of resource was one that was measured in hours of work. Project 2000 has added a Material type of resource that allows tracking of resources that are measured in units used, not related to hours. This allows tracking of actual material costs and material cost variances for the first time.
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| 7. The Ability to Have Multiple Resource Availability Ranges |
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| In previous versions, you could define a resource as only being available during a certain period of time during the project, but there was only one availability range allowed. In the latest version, you can have as many ranges as you need. This gives much greater flexibility in resource scheduling and gives greater accuracy of project schedules.
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| 8. The Estimated Duration Feature |
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| In the new version, if you do not enter the duration field, it will flag the task as having an estimated duration. This is useful when you are mixing duration estimates and work effort estimates in the same project plan. Those tasks where work effort has been estimated will show having an estimated duration, which allows a project manager to quickly see whether duration or work effort was estimated for the task. This can be valuable during a project when re-estimates are required the project manager can see whether the estimates of duration or work effort have been more accurate and then re-estimate using the more accurate method.
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| 9. The File Type and Location Options |
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| On the Save tab under the Tools-Options menu item is the ability to save your work as a previous version of Microsoft Project. This can be extremely useful in organizations where upgrading is not done at one time across the organization or where you have to exchange files with another organization that has not upgraded. This tab also allows you to specify where certain file types should be located. This makes it much quicker to access standard organization templates that are shared on a network drive.
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| 10. The Ability to Clear Resource Levelling |
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| In previous versions, you could not clear the resource levelling delays once they had been added by the system. In Project 2000, there is a function to clear the levelling delays. |
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| For more information about this article, please contact bia™ at info@bia.ca. |
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| © Business Improvement Architects |
