Project Management Software Upgrade

We all know that Microsoft products are not the bests in the market -except for the all might Microsoft Excel. But when we decided to move from Microsoft Project 2003 to Microsoft Project 2007 we were not aware of the big problems we will face in the near future.

We all were more than happy with the Microsoft Project Server 2003 -this is a great product, not the best but a great product, I will not blame on Microsoft products. So when 2007 version came out we evaluate the migration and take the fatal decision: UPGRADE

I hope Microsoft refund the company I work for, not only with the product value but also assuming the additional costs we incurred when started using it. We even set a SWAT team inside the company to address the software defects -WOW, could you imagine a SWAT MS Word team in your company to address MS Word defects?

These are the kind of defects we found:

There is no ability to add persons to a tasks when people already submit their time -i.e. if somebody is included during the task execution you will have to create a new one for the same purpose.
Do not put blank lines in your project plan -What? Are evil blank lines?

There are more issues that you could even imagine but, I doesn’t make any sense to write them all, probably you will need years to read them all :-). When you and your team are forced to log their time more than one time (yes we do that every day for every work day of the year) because of PS issues you will see how many defects this product has and will pray to the software gods for solutions.

Probably you remember the great launches of the Microsoft products that demonstrates that they usually promoted/release products without concerns about the quality. Did you remember the Windows Millenium Edition (a.k.a Windows Me)? Probably you don’t. Try to reach it from the Microsoft site, try to even get support, it was deleted from our minds. Probably Microsoft will do the same with PS 2007, so copy this entry in your computers so they will not be able to erase your knowledge.

I’m pretty sure the Microsoft PS team will have a better/decent product in the future but BY THE DATE OF THIS ENTRY PUBLICATION, I will encourage people to not use Microsoft Project Server 2007 -or at least try it before buy it -and when I said try it I really mean it.

LEGAL NOTICE: This is my personal appreciation of the product and DO NOT represent the legal company position. This entry is not related to the company I work for in any way. I’m writing it because I feel frustrated about the poor product as final user and I hope somebody found this entry it useful. BTW, What does PS means? Project Server or Problems Served.