Task Management Options and Roadmap

Task management products and services from Microsoft range from simple to-do list managers for individuals to project and portfolio management systems for large organizations. By deploying, supporting, and retiring the right Microsoft task management technologies, organizations can help keep their workers coordinated with one another while avoiding wasted effort on technologies that are on their way out. This report briefly summarizes each of Microsoft’s major families of products and services for task management and predicts the likely future developments of each.

The report covers only technologies specifically for task management, not general database and list managers such as Excel and Access, although these are often used for task management.

Task Management

Task management systems track work items (tasks) with their status, due dates, assigned workers and resources, and other information. Task management systems cover a spectrum of complexity from to-do lists for individuals, to simple task lists for small teams (which Microsoft sometimes calls “work management”), and to more robust systems for selecting, planning, and executing complex projects (which Microsoft calls “project and portfolio management”). Microsoft technologies cover the spectrum. (See the chart “Task Management Options Summary“.)