Project Management?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
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Chris

I am looking for a nice project management third party software that will
integrate with my Exchange server and Outlook. I am a small company with 15
employees that need to be able to assign tasks to multiple people, track
them, make updates, so forth and so on. They also would like to be able to
access this information while out of the office.

Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

I have heard of Project Server, but I think that may be overkill for our
small business.

Thanks
 
Microsoft Project Server is indeed over-kill. Microsoft Project is
Microsoft's "project" management software, and if you are indeed
managing projects this will be useful to you. If you are managing
"tasks" ... which are different from projects ... you might find you can
do this best with use of Outlook's task management capabilities.

I don't really know enough about what you are trying to do to make any
further recommendations ...

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms
 
Well, we are an ad specialty agency that also hosts company websites as well
as produces company catalogs and incentive programs.
I am looking for a program that will help the managers with tracking all the
aspects of the job. They are currently using the Task function of Outlook
but it does not allow them to see and do everything they need. Such as
receiving updates from multiple people on a single task or allow them to see
an overview of where they are and where they need to go.
For example: developing and publishing a paper catalog for a customer.
There are lots of things involved and we have no way to 'electronically'
track them all.

I will definitely check out slipstick.com Is Outlook's task management
capabilities any different than just the assigning of tasks?

Thanks
Chris
 
For "where they need to go" ... you are indeed talking project
management, and for that I can recommend Microsoft Project (or equivalent).

What you have to think through is your project methodology and who will
have what role in using the tool, how it gets communicated, implemented,
etc. If it's not Microsoft Project, it can be be some other PM tool.

Project can interact with Outlook for task assignments and feedback.
The 2003 version has "enterprise" capability for support of work groups
and larger organisations.

When I say "PM Tool", I mean something that does "project management" as
espoused by the PMI (www.pmi.org). You can read the PM BOK (Book of
Knowledge) as Project is in line with that. There are other tools
available, and I've even seen and played with some terrific open source
offerings, e.g. phpCollab, for collaborative Project Management. It's
all about where you are and where you want to go.

At this juncture, you'd be well advised to seek some time of some local
or regional experts in Project Management to show you what PM tools can
do, look at Project (or others), ... but most importantly look at how
your organisation currently operates and how you wish it to operate.
(they should be looking at things like "project maturity" which are
specific benchmarks/parameters for how the organisation manages
projects). With that you can build a plan to implement the work
processes and the use of the new tools.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms
 
I have taken a look at the Project (Server) and it seems that you have to
have Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 to make this work correctly.
What is the take on that? We are running Server 2000 with Outlook 2000 as
well as several machines running XP Pro with Outlook 2002 and some machines
running 98 with Outlook 2000. Will the Project server work with our current
configuration or not?
Man this is getting confusing (and expensive)
 
You don't necessarily need Project Server and the enterprise components.
You may well be well served to use Microsoft Project Standard (Version
2003 is newest). This is the "classic" PM tool (schedules, plans
budgets, critical path, etc. The product has been pretty much the same
since Project Version 98. You can get a lot of info about it from books
easily available in the book stores. Do some browsing.

The "enterprise" add-on's to Project require additional infrastructure
and add complexity. They are for work group communication and
collaboration of project plans.

The basic model, in my view, is the the Project Managers -- the people
in charge of projects and those who know how to drive the Project tool
properly (and remember, just like having Word doesn't make you a
novelist, having Microsoft Project doesn't make you a Project Manager),
and the team members and executives use Project's Web Access to interact
with project information and documents.

You'd need: Microsoft Project 2003 (Professional) to communicate with
Project Server, Project Server, and licenses for (CAL's) for Project Web
Access. Server runs on top of Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server.
(Off the top of my head I don't know if Server 2003 required or not
.... I suspect it will run ok on Windows Small Business Server).

Yes ... going to Project server will get very confusing and get very
expensive. I am not at all convinced by any stretch of the imagination
that your organisation needs or wants it. The Enterprise components of
Project add complexity. they may be worth it. Do the economics and
weigh the cost and benefits.

At minimum, I do think that your "chief project manager" could benefit
by having a copy of Project 2003 (Standard) and use that to model all
projects in the office. Figure out work processs that enable team
members to contribute and collaborate abouts status of projects. Take
some training. Read a book. Learn to use it. Don't discard it because
"it's giving me the wrong answer", or "I can do all these calculations
so much better in Excel than in Project.". Yea. Right.

The way forward is to get someone in for the day, someone who knows
project management and Microsoft Project and is pragmatic about how it
can be implemented ... and do some brainstorming.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms
 
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