Microsoft Project Accelerated

We have found many of our clients for Microsoft Project training that are in construction make little use of the features Microsoft makes available for resource management. So we created an accelerated course that does not go into resources in depth. And shortens a few other topics as well. This compresses the standard two day course sequence into a single day. We taught the first class a couple weeks ago in San Juan Capistrano and found it a good fit for these students. Below is the slide deck from SlideShare.

PRJ101a Project 2013 Accelerated from Dan D'Urso

Project Libre Resource View

Below is a screenshot of the of the resource sheet views in both Microsoft Project and Project Libre. As can be seen they are virtually identical. We will cover the Project Libre resource sheet in more detail in later posts in this series. The green shading in the Libre view means that the resources have been assigned in this project. Note that the screenshots are both of the same  ".mpp" file. Project Libre can read and write Microsoft Project files.

Click to expand view on box.com

Project Libre

We are preparing a new Project course based on Project Libre. This is free, open-source project management software that can read and write Microsoft Project files. Our course will parallel our Microsoft Project courses as much as possible. I will try to post our slides and/or comparison slides as we go along. This should prove interesting to those interested to see how compatible they are. Click the image below to see an expanded version on box.com. It shows the basic Gantt Chart view of Project Libre compared to Microsoft Project.

Using Microsoft Project for Agile Projects

You CAN use use Microsoft Project for Agile projects. While it may not be the ideal tool it can be done if you use custom fields and filters, etc. Below is a link from mpug.com that shows how. Lynda.com also has a video by Bonnie Biafore that shows how. Again making use of custom fields.

Agile Project Tutorial on mpug.com

Anna Forss has a different take. Check out the link below. She works with the calendars and options.

Anna Forss Agile with Microsoft Project

Please note this is not an argument for or against the Agile methodology versus waterfall. I am just pointing out a couple of useful links. Most of our Microsoft Project clients have been in the construction industry which uses waterfall. On the other hand we see little interest in waterfall from software development, especially web, groups. They much prefer Agile methodologies, with Scrum seeming the most popular. In my opinion the choice of a methodology depends on the project and the domain. There is no one answer as to which is "best".