• Illustration: Project 2007 Undo

Improvements in Project 2007, released with the 2007 Office system in Nov. 2006, will help project managers create, manage, and monitor projects. However, the latest version does not benefit from the new Office Ribbon user interface, and the Professional version of Project 2007 cannot connect to Project Server 2002 or 2003.

Clients Back in the Limelight

Project Standard and Professional are desktop applications for project management, a set of specialized principles, methods, and techniques for planning, scheduling, and controlling projects effectively.

The server version, Project Server, enables teams to enter data and view reports on project status and costs and integrate those data with other key systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Project Professional serves as the primary interface to Project Server for project managers, but Project Server also provides a Web-based interface called Project Web Access, which can be used by workers who are not project managers to update project status, view reports, and perform other tasks.

However, many project managers still use the desktop-based Project Standard and Professional as stand-alone project management tools, so Microsoft has improved these products in the 2007 release to make them easier to understand, and to help managers control work, schedules, and finances, as well as effectively communicate project-related information.

Project 2007 Improvements

The most prominent stand-alone improvements to Project 2007 desktop versions are as follows:

Multi-level undo. Project managers can now undo and redo changes that they make to a project plan. This is similar to the undo and redo function in other Office products, such as Word or Excel, but with Project 2007 a project manager can now evaluate "what if" scenarios to make a change to a task, resource, or schedule, see the effects of the change, and undo the change if the effects are not as anticipated. Previously, project managers had to use "Save As" to make a backup copy of a project before trying major changes to their plan. (For an illustration, see "Project 2007 Undo".)

Change highlighting. In addition to being unable to easily undo the effects of a change, Project users had difficulty seeing all the places in the project impacted by a change. With Project 2007, changed cells in a project are highlighted by a different background color.

Task drivers. Spotting the factors, such as prerequisites and constraints, that affect the start date of a task can be difficult. To mitigate this problem, Project 2007 allows a project manager to click on any task and immediately see the task driver pane, which shows prerequisite tasks and resource constraints driving the start date of the selected task. Clicking on a driver accesses a link to relevant information about the driver.

Costs. Cost resources, the resource type for fixed costs assignable to tasks, has been updated to monitor project financials more accurately. Specifically, managers can now assign multiple fixed costs to a task, tie costs to account codes, and roll up costs against budgets. Additionally, costs are not tied to the work, so changing the percent complete or end date of a task will not affect fixed-cost resources. Having more predefined cost-related fields permits easier mapping to project accounting systems, such as ERP modules.

Visual reports and cubes. Project 2007 uses Excel 2003 or higher and Visio 2007 Professional to produce charts, graphs, and diagrams based on Project 2007 data. Project data for stand-alone reports is manipulated in local online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes that can connect to Excel PivotTables (interactive tables to summarize or cross-tabulate large amounts of data) or to Visio diagrams. OLAP is a general term for techniques and technologies used to summarize, query, and analyze historical data to answer questions related to business or, in this case, project performance. OLAP data are stored in special databases called OLAP cubes, which summarize raw transaction data (such as individual sales records from an ERP application) to facilitate reporting and analysis. Different summaries, and therefore different reports, can be generated by manipulating PivotTable rows and columns or by applying filters.

Six cubes are included in Project 2007: Task Time Phased, Task Non-Time Phased, Resource Time Phased, Resource Non-Time Phased, Assignment Time Phased, and Assignment Non-Time Phased. Project managers can also define their own report templates.

Migration Issues

Because of significant changes to the Project Server 2007, Project 2007 Professional cannot be used to connect to older versions including Project Server 2002 or Project Server 2003. However, Project 2007 can be installed on the same computer as an older version of Project if access to an earlier version of Project Server is required.

Project 2007 can open files created with previous versions of Project, and it can save project files in prior formats, but features in the new version that do not map to prior file formats will be discarded.

The Complexity of Project Management Software

Because management of large-scale projects is inherently complex, the software programs designed to help project managers are also complex. Often, project managers use project management software at the start of a project to identify the tasks that need to be successfully completed, to estimate the time required to complete the project by determining the priority of each task relative to other tasks, and to assign tasks to individuals or teams. However, once this initial snapshot of the project is in place, project managers often abandon the software because it is time-consuming and difficult to work with.

Project Standard and Professional 2007 attempt to address this fundamental problem by improving the wizards, and by providing templates for common products. Common information about projects can be saved in a master template for all projects within a company. But the wizards, while helpful, do not expose all the functionality for the features they are helping users work with. For example, the Gantt Chart formatting wizard does not allow a project manager to control all of the chart's bar labels. So while the 2007 improvements will be welcome to existing users of the Project clients, they are unlikely to expand the product's reach to new customers, although the Project Guide Wizard does provide step-by-step assistance to set up and do basic tasks and reporting.

Availability and Resources

Project Standard 2007 allows project managers to manage project work, schedules, and finances, but it is really designed for project managers who do not require Web-based coordination or collaboration. Managers who do, should use Project Professional 2007 or Project Web Access and the central database of shared projects and resources that's enabled by Project Server.

Office Project Professional 2007 can be either run as a single-user desktop solution or connected to Office Project Server 2007 for enterprise project management capabilities.

A complete comparison of the features in Project Standard, Professional, Server, and Web Access is available at office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/FX101757931033.aspx.

Microsoft's Office Project Web site is located at office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/FX100487771033.aspx.