Microsoft Project Reviews

We use Microsoft Project to plan our projects, including some tasks that we need to accomplish. We use JIRA as well. We use a lot of tools to plan our jobs.

The user interface is simple and it helps me in planning what needs to be accomplished.

I am a regular user and for me, it is perfect. I would love to see a mind map feature where you can draw some diagrams of the project. Then you can connect ideas and watch them on a map.

I have been using Microsoft Project for more than five years.

We use a cloud solution and it is transparent for us. We have the perfect client and it saves the data.

I have no idea about the cost because it is a corporate decision. 

I would rate Microsoft Project a nine out of ten.

I am using the Microsoft Project App in Teams and I use it mostly for project scheduling. We don't use it for reports or anything else.

Microsoft Project has helped improve my organization by providing transparency. Everyone can see what they're assigned and other information.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Project are the availability of being online and within Teams. My entire team can use it and see it, versus the full Microsoft Projects, such as Project Professional, you need to have a license.

All the versions of Microsoft Project could use improvement one way or another, but the specific version that I'm using, the reporting capabilities, and/or being able to link think other projects to it could improve. If I have a portfolio of projects that I'm working on, I want to be able to see a dashboard of all of my projects in one place. I haven't been able to do that in this particular version without using coding or PowerBI or anything similar.

In a future release, the dashboard should improve because there isn't one, I had to create my own.

I have been using Microsoft Project on and off for approximately 20 years.

The stability of the Microsoft Project is good.

We have not scaled Microsoft Project, it is only our 25-person IT departments using it. We have desktop analysts, project managers, and directors using the solution.

We do plan to roll out Microsoft Project to our business professionals on the business side of the organization, in the next three or four months.

We have not had any issues using the solution to contact the support from Microsoft.

We used LiquidPlanner previously. It was more of a time-keeping tool versus a project management tool. If I only want to build a schedule, I couldn't do that in LiquidPlanner without my team tracking their time.

LiquidPlanner is only good for timekeeping, and I couldn't get my staff to keep their time, it wasn't practical for us. I needed to be able to build a schedule and be able to track it on my own, versus what was done, versus people having to go in and track the time they work on a specific task. Whereas LiquidPlanner doesn't give me the opportunity to build a project plan without using timekeeping.

The initial setup of the Microsoft Project is straightforward. However, it was a Team's deployment and Microsoft Project is part of that suite. It took us approximately six months for the complete deployment.

We did use a consultant to help us deploy Teams and we were involved too. The consultant has been very helpful, we use them for all kinds of different deployments.

We have two systems analysts who are in charge of keeping Microsoft Teams up updated which includes Microsoft Project.  

We're managing projects a little bit better, we're a lot more transparent, and Microsoft Project is easier to report on, versus LiquidPlanner, which we spent a lot of money on. We saved all that money not having to use LiquidPlanner.

You only need a Team's license in order to use Microsoft Project within Teams, which is very helpful.

If an organization already has Teams, they already have access to Microsoft Projects, or at least Microsoft Project Online. There's no reason to buy separate project management software, at least for a smaller company like ours.

We did not evaluate other options. We used what we had, and tried to save money. We already have Microsoft Project, and we decided to use it.

My advice to others would be to do extensive training and tutorials and create QRGs. It's new and not a lot of people know how to use it. Training is the most important.

I rate Microsoft Project an eight out of ten.

It is easy to define timelines with Microsoft Project. You can get a clear picture of the model, you want to create.  You can create inside an agile or waterfall model. Microsoft Project is easy to delegate tasks to different members where you want to put the task and who you want to work on it so that you have a clear path.

Right now you can create a timeline with the major up tasks, but there's no real way to mark it. When you are planning, you usually have resources on board for a single task.  Microsoft Project has no way to mark it because it is based more on agile methodology. Many times you want to take it by the resource count and that is where it becomes tricky. 

 I would like to see an entire baseline, like in JIRA. It is like project planning in JIRA, but there's a whole story building that you can do. Microsoft Project needs to incorporate some points of story-building and epic building, which are currently missing. 

I have been working with Microsoft Project for the past month.

Microsoft Project is a stable solution.

There is no problem with Microsoft Project's scalability.

I do not use Microsoft technical support because our company has its own technical support team.

I only use a login feature for Microsoft Project. 

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight and a half out of ten.

Microsoft Project is one of the main tools our teams abroad use for planning, and it's very flexible. Local teams use it to manage small projects locally. It's also a repository for storing financial information that we don't want to track down. 

Teams use Microsoft Project for tracking tasks, managing requests, assigning resources, and following up. Workers can submit work to managers for approval and then it's submitted to the main process. 

Microsoft Project provides a starter tool that project managers can learn before moving on to solutions that are more convenient or widely used in the company. The interface is intuitive, so anyone can jump in and start planning. 

It's also a tool that is common among many companies, so if I take a new job at another firm, there's a good chance they will be using Microsoft Project, too. When we hire a new person, they can usually start working right away without any training. We only need to teach them how to apply that knowledge to the other tools we use.

Microsoft Project integrates well with the Microsoft Office family of applications. It has plugins that interact with it and you can use it with Microsoft Teams. We can use plugins to communicate with JIRA, Projectplace, and Planview. It's not widely used in the company, of course, but it's something that can interact with the official tools that we have. 

You can do a lot of stuff with Microsoft Project, but the licensing is for individual computers, so it's not connected to a central platform like the one that we have in Planview. 

Planview FLEX licensing gives us a central repository where all the projects are stored so you can check the finances, resources, etc. It's quite useful to have everything connected. We don't have that for Microsoft Project. It's disconnected. The reporting capabilities could also be better, especially with finance and resources. Everybody complains about reports. That's why we need another tool. 

I've only been using Microsoft Project for a year. I have more experience with Planview Projectplace, but we use this as well. I'm primarily responsible for Projectplace in my role. I do onboarding for other teams, create the workflows, and work with use case scenarios for various teams worldwide. 

It's an on-premise solution. It's never going to break down because it's installed on a local computer. It's highly stable from that point of view, but our use case is also limited. 

A project management application is only as powerful as the information you put inside. Projectplace is available to time reporters, developers, engineers, resource managers, and financial controllers. It is a powerful tool that provides a centralized way to gather information. 

A director can access Projectplace and see every project involving their teams. You can create custom reports. We have teams that design new reports for the various needs we have. That's the most powerful feature a project management solution can have—the ability to pull out information. That's something we don't have with Microsoft Project.

I rate Microsoft Project seven out of 10. Better tools are available. Microsoft Project is a decent tool for small startups and medium-sized projects, and it's widely used. 

We work with customers to develop products from scratch. The process involves multiple design teams, financial controls, and planning. Each project is part of a larger program, and we have to follow up on that. There are tons of tools that can do this way better. Microsoft Project, in my opinion, is for small and medium-sized projects.

Microsoft Project is one of the only solutions you can use in just about any industry. It's difficult to do that with most other project management tools. There is a lot of flexibility within the product assets. Most sectors can utilize Microsoft Project successfully because it doesn't have any generic adapters. Primavera is a competitor from Oracle, and they've got adapters for some industries but not others. For example, they have adapters for construction management, so people who are on construction projects usually go for Primavera because the adapters make it easy for them to scale out a project.

With Microsoft Project, you need to do more work to get the same thing, but that is the advantage of having adapters. Adapters make it easy for certain sectors to implement their projects, but Project doesn't have that, so anybody can use it. That is the best thing about Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project has much room for improvement. The solution is still stuck where it was in 2013. Not much has changed since then. There is a lot that can be changed in the enterprise segment.

There hasn't been a significant addition to the enterprise part of Microsoft Project since 2013. The biggest change was the integration of Power BI reporting into Microsoft Project. Other than that, we are seeing still the same features 

Some of the underlying things have changed. For example, data management is quite different. It's called Dataworks, and database management is different. Data is handled differently, but there haven't been any new features on an enterprise scale. 

Microsoft has developed more user-friendly Project implementations beyond enterprise use cases. They're transitioning from the enterprise platform to something that everybody can use, but they are losing out on features.

We have been selling Microsoft Project for a couple of years.

Microsoft Project is stable, but it requires a lot of customization. 

Microsoft Project is highly scalable. It can handle anything from one user to 10,000. What makes Microsoft Project different is that a single person can handle thousands of tasks in a project easily.

We haven't spoken to anybody at Microsoft support because they do not have a big team on Microsoft Project for this region, but we learned about production solutions through implementation. 

We picked up a couple of orders for Microsoft Project for certain shipbuilding companies. We took their projects and did a study, then implemented a solution for them that was tailored to their particular needs. We learned on the job, but there was no guidance or support from the vendor.

Project is essentially an extension of an Excel sheet. You need to configure a lot of things to get your project management done correctly, and the use case scenario is different for each customer. Some require Project for certain needs, which may not be the same for the next customer. We need to understand the customer's work requirements, and we will build a solution on Microsoft Project.

Seven out of 10. My advice for Microsoft Project or any project management solution is to set clear goals. You need to have a vision in mind when thinking about Microsoft Project deliveries or any other project team delivery. If you don't have a clear vision, you may not realize project value, and that might lead to issues.

We use Microsoft Project for creating the implementation projects for IT, such as anything from infrastructure through application deployments. In the current project, we are using it for the cybersecurity measures that we're implementing.

Microsoft Project has helped our organization by tracking the capabilities of when we can deliver a solution.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Project are you can create critical paths pretty easily, and you can import from an Excel spreadsheet to your task list as you create it during your working sessions with your team.

Microsoft Project could improve the interface, it should be more intuitive. It could be adjusted a little bit to make it a little easier to use and more user-friendly. It is a very powerful tool and it takes people a while to get used to it.

I have found that when you're saving your project plans to a SharePoint site it does not work well. I am not able to check it out and check it in as I would on the Microsoft Project's server. If you have multiple people trying to edit tasks in the project plan for the completion or status, it doesn't give you abilities to check the project in and out. It limits who makes changes to a project plan if multiple people are trying to do it at the same time. You can potentially overwrite someone else saved changes. There is not a lock on changes to the project plan. If I'm trying to change something, it's whoever saves first, then the changes go in. If you're working and extensively updating a lot of things in the project plan, then somebody else comes in and updates one line, they could potentially override everything that you've changed.

There are some accessibility issues that could be fixed. 

I have been using Microsoft Project for approximately 15 years.

Microsoft Project is scalable. I've used it in the server mode where I ran multiple projects under a program, which were very large project plans with up to 1,000 lines, and I didn't have any problems with performance or managing projects.

We have approximately 1,000 users using this solution in my organization. They are typically project managers. 

We are using Microsoft Project extensively on some projects. However, it depends on the type of project, it doesn't lend itself well to non Waterfall type activities.

I have not contacted the technical support.

Our IT department handles the deployment of the solution. I can tweak it on a per-project basis. However, the implementation or installation of the software is done quickly.

My organization is pushing to move to the Jira platform or to use Scrum instead of Waterfall.

I would recommend others to buy a Microsoft Project book that has tips, and a lot of them have templates for different types of projects.

I rate Microsoft Project a nine out of ten.

We use it for IT project management. It is mainly used for managing tasks.

The standard project planning features and charts are most valuable.

When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project.

Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project.

I have been using this solution for 15 years. 

It is stable but not for huge project plans.

I am using its desktop version. They also have an online version where you can collaborate and do things like that. It is Office 365, which I don't use. 

In terms of users, around 10,000 people might be using it. Its users include service delivery managers, project managers, and business analysts.

I never had to use tech support for Microsoft Project.

I have used a competing product that was free and open-source, but it didn't have as many features as Microsoft Project.

We are kind of migrating to Jira for the agile model because we mostly have agile-based developments. All task stories and other things are managed in Jira. We are not using Microsoft Project that much now. It is only being used for project planning and for creating task dependencies.

In my organization, it is already packaged and available. 

I would advise others to learn about project planning. There is good enough information available online on Microsoft's website.

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight out of ten. It is good at doing what it is supposed to do. 

We primarily use the solution to enter our status and our time. For each task that we're doing, we have to enter a monthly status. It's for project management.

Overall, the solution has been so much better than the previous project management tool we had been using.

It's very easy to select the projects. It's so easy to save the project, task, and hours that I want. You don't have to think about it. 

The user interface is so clean. The previous EPM product was so hard to understand in terms of the user interface.

Once we commit our status, changing it is hard. Sometimes, I may make a mistake about a holiday or something. I may not remember that there was a particular day that was a holiday and I may enter time on that day as if I worked. Sometimes I want to fix it. It would be ideal if the holidays were pre-installed so that we wouldn't make that mistake, that would be ideal. It should allow us to set it so that we cant enter time on holidays. 

I have only explored maybe 5% of Microsoft Project as we're only using it to log things. I haven't seen a lack of features.

I've been using the solution for about one year at this point.

I haven't had any issues with stability. There aren't bugs or glitches, at least, none that I have witnessed. It doesn't crash or freeze. Overall, it's quite good.

Every employee has to use this solution, and we are a sizable organization. Likely, we have thousands of users on this product.

The solution is on the cloud, and therefore it can scale so well. We have our own internal cloud, and Microsoft has a cloud as well. If a company wants to expand it, it should be able to do so with relative ease.

I can't speak to the quality of Microsoft's technical support. I've never contacted them, so I can't say how knowledgeable or responsive they are. We have our own internal support. We are a very big organization, so we have an internal support team that assists us if we need help. They may reach out to Microsoft directly, however, I have no knowledge of their interactions.

We did previously use a different project management solution. I've only seen the user interface. It's my understanding that it is called EPM, or something to that effect. I like Microsoft's solution much more. It's a better product.

I only use the solution. I did not have to set it up. I can't speak to how easy or difficult it is to do this as I am just an end-user in the company.

I'm an end-user and customer. My organization is a large company and we're a big customer of Microsoft.

I don't know which version of the solution I'm currently using.

My life has improved so much with Microsoft Project. It works extraordinarily well.

Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Project helps to manage our projects.

We can't say that there has been an improvement. We are trying to get to that point, but we are only into it with the new version for a month.

It comes with our Office 365. 

We started using it and we stopped using LiquidPlanner. 

I am most comfortable using Microsoft Project just because I have used it for so long, but we are still trying to figure out the new version at the moment.

The new version has made it a bit more complicated. We are trying to synchronize Project Online and Planner.

In Team Planner, there is supposed to be a way that you can sync your tasks in the Project Plan with Planner so that the project team doesn't necessarily need to use Microsoft Project. They can see what tasks are assigned to them, do them and update the status.

But, we haven't been able to figure that out yet.

They can make it easier to streamline the product. 

When using Microsoft Project, the desktop and Planner don't seem to talk to each other as seamlessly as I would hope. It is possible that it is a user error and we have not configured it correctly. My IT team is new to it as well.

I have had approximately 20 years of experience with Microsoft Project.

I just started using the latest version a little over a month ago.

I have the desktop app and on the cloud.

At the moment we have an issue with synchronization with the planner. We are trying to get it to work by watching YouTube videos and the IT director has been working with the vendor to see how to get the functionality to work.

It's unknown if we need a plug-in or not. It is difficult to decipher whether or not it's us or them because we are so green with the product.

From what I can tell, there is a lot that you can do with it. Power BI, reporting, SharePoint, and Teams are all supposed to connect in some way, but, it's not as intuitive as I thought it would have been.

There isn't a lot that is available that tells you how to do this. You have to figure it out which is what we are trying to do. I wish that it was a bit more straightforward.

Currently, there are two of us who use Microsoft Project because we are trying to get it configured in a way that makes sense for our organization before we can bring in the rest of the team that may need to use it.

We have not used technical support.

Previously, we were using LiquidPlanner.

LiquidPlanner is a tool that you would use in an ideal situation for project management, which almost never happens. I can't get my organization to punch a time clock, and that is what LiquidPlanner is.

The initial setup is a bit more complex than I would have hoped for or that I am used to. Again, it is possible that it's a lack of know-how and education with this product.

It gets expensive when having to add all of the plugins and everything that you need.

I would suggest using an expert. Get an implementation vendor to set it up for you.

This solution probably does everything that I need it to do, but I just don't know how to do it yet.

I like Microsoft Project and it does everything that I need it to do, but it doesn't do everything. That's Microsoft; they always get you to about 80% there, and then you need some type of plugin or API. It never quite does everything.

I would rate Microsoft Project an eight out of ten.

Whenever we have a client with a complicated situation, we create a project plan. And we use Microsoft Project (MS Project) for administrating, monitoring, and tracking the project.  For most small projects, MS Project is satisfactory.

We can input information and then share it with the project team and stakeholders. That helps a little, but if somebody changes their mind, it could change how we manage the project. There are some new features in MS Project 2024. However, more features aren't necessarily useful because now you must train people to use them. They may say, "Why do I need this new feature?" Newer versions of MS Project display a warning when a task runs behind schedule. However, it is necessary to input a date change for that warning manually, and administrative action takes precious time.

It's possible to get input from other programs, such as Outlook, but we don't use Outlook for anything other than email, even though it could do other things. Time is a critical resource. We don't have time to learn about these features and use them productively, so they are of no value to us.

MS Project's resource leveling capability is beneficial. We like this feature. We want to be able to expand tasks and look at different resources and task usage. It is good at assigning tasks to teams.

It's generally compliant with the Project Management Institute approach to project management, which means MS Project helps us be more uniform and consistent in conducting each project.

MS Project can insert objects, like a drawing or an Excel worksheet, but cannot handle business rules. Also, I would like to see better integration with graphics applications such as MS Visio. The graphics are primitive and need some major work. I would like to have the ability to insert some small macros within the project for Monte Carlo risk analysis. For example, if you're unsure how much time a task may require, you can generate a reasonable guess.

MS Project is very time and labor-intensive to keep current. You need to update it continually. You may find that you are spending more time maintaining the MS Project file than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to do that.

MS Project should have the capability to link it to other applications to make the program dynamic when a real-time resource or schedule changes, but it is not dynamic. It would be helpful to insert real-time input data for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see the impact in real-time, if possible.

I want to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. Also, we might have a project underway seven days a week.

External data sources, like third-party manufacturing processes, impact some tasks. Embedding external processes within MS Project is almost impossible because we don't have programming resources here in a practical sense. Also, the interface of Microsoft Project is proprietary. We want to link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs and integrate them automatically with our master project plan, e.g., specific third-party CNC machine data. The supplier's system does not interface with ours'. We have to get the outputs from their system serially and manually update the MS Project file to determine the schedule impact. That takes time. There is a risk of data entry errors at both ends. On tight projects, every minute counts.

I would like to see a control system interface with Microsoft Project. Real-time system data helps predict cost and schedule variances. For example, if you had to finish a day ahead of schedule, you could "talk" to the systems' software and determine if a given machine works for another four hours, then you could meet the accelerated schedule. MS Project requires manual data entry with a risk of mistakes. Presently, there is no automated data entry capability in MS Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most companies don't have the same problems we have with MS Project.

When you're working on a project that has to get done, you will spend most of the time wrestling with Microsoft Project, whereas you should be using these hours to manage the project.

Thinking on a slightly bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one application, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that, at least not easily. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see an active program or at least the capability to be dynamic, even if it is close to real-time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time systems. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be superior to what exists now. It may not be genuinely real-time, but it is at least closer to it.

I want to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library or write a macro. Whenever I change the data in an Excel file for a given project or task, it should update the corresponding Visio or PowerPoint file. If I'm doing a pie chart or any graphic, I don't want to manually update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. Microsoft doesn't make significant changes every time they come out with a new version. However, they don't appear to fix the issue. Instead, they add a few features.

I have been using Microsoft Project since it was released in the mid-1980s. Although MS Project can be helpful, it does not teach project management.

It's relatively stable. I've never had a crash. I can't remember it ever crashing. If I  entered some information that it can't resolve, it usually comes up with an error message.

I think it is limited to around 400,000 tasks. I am not sure. I never had to go that far. We have five consultants who are remote users.

I've never really needed any support. When Microsoft has a seminar or a meeting locally, I might go to it and give my feedback.

Neutral

Installation is automatic and simple, we had no issues.

The implementation was done in-house.

MS Project pays for itself by helping me keep my thinking straight.  The purchase price of the application is insignificant when compared with the time involved in trying to do project management manually on paper attached to large poster boards. We did it that way before the advent of PCs.  There is some benefit to seeing an entire project plan on paper to provide a visual idea of project scope and progress, but intelligent use of MS Project can generate the same information.  It takes a lot of time to become so proficient with MS Project that these key bits of information are generated automatically through accurate and complete task definitions, WBS, and project schedule updates.

Make sure you have a good business reason for purchasing MS Project. It isn't cheap and there are free alternatives, with simple capabilities, available.

MS Project was sufficient for our requirements, so we did not evaluate any other options.

Make sure you understand what MS Project can do and what it cannot do. It cannot read your mind. Just like any other program, it only does what you tell it to do. If you give it the wrong information, it will provide you with incorrect output. It is very labor-intensive. There are minimal capabilities to help you write routines. So, you have to change dates and task names. If you don't understand project management concepts well, you're just going to delude yourself into thinking MS Project helps you. You have to understand the process of project management to use the application effectively. Otherwise, you are wasting your time. It will not teach you how to do project management.

I would rate MS Project a five out of ten because it hasn't evolved that much. Microsoft added lots of bells and whistles, but they don't add much new value. They don't save me much time. I want MS Project to be a dynamic program, but it remains a passive program after more than 30 years. I've made comments about it at some seminars hosted by Microsoft. We've told them to make it a dynamic program or at least have an option to make it active. We would be willing to pay more for this capability. It's worth it, but they don't do it. I guess they don't see enough business potential in doing it that way, and I don't have the resources to create an internal application to make it that way. I am not in that business.