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Dear Andy,
Welcome to 2006!
In
the last newsletter we invited you to join us at the Microsoft
Project Conference in Seattle. It was good to meet many of
you there and share information and experiences in best-practice
Microsoft Project usage. I'm pleased to say that the event
had no disclosure restrictions upon it, so this newsletter will
focus on sharing our findings with you.
As
this newsletter's content is dedicated to the Microsoft Project
Conference, tips and tricks are taking a month off.
In the
next newsletter we'll be sharing with you the results of our
recent Microsoft Project survey. With almost one thousand
responses, the survey has provided us with some useful
statistics and trends; together with some surprises - so watch
this space! Again, a big thank you to all who took part.
Sincerely,
Andy Jessop
CEO and Founder
In
this newsletter:
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Microsoft Project - the state of the business |
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This
year's Microsoft Project Conference was the biggest ever, with
well over 1,500 delegates travelling to a rainy Seattle from
locations as varied as Johannesburg, Auckland, Tokyo and Moscow.
The conference agenda comprised of a busy three-day programme of
developer and management presentations, combined with
industry-expert seminars and technical workshops. In
addition, the conference provided an unparalleled opportunity to
share information and experiences with the global
thought-leaders within the Microsoft Project community.
One
key theme that resonated throughout both the keynote sessions
and the detailed presentations is that the Microsoft
Project-related business is BIG. Steve Ballmer
(Microsoft's CEO) commented that Microsoft Project alone as a
product is worth more than US$1BN a year to Microsoft
Corporation, making
Project the 25th largest software product by value in the entire
world. This $1BN figure is also achieving compound growth,
making Microsoft Project (and project management in general) a
good place to be both now and also for years to come.
Another key conference theme was something that most of us
already know: Effective project management is crucial to the
success of businesses and endeavours, or as Gene Kranz
(the NASA Director of Mission Operations on Apollo 13) stated
categorically: "Failure is not an option." Gene's
keynote reminded us all that timely planning and 'thinking
outside of the box' can transform seemingly impossible problems
into working solutions. |
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Microsoft Project for the desktop user |
In the
past two releases of Project, the general desktop user has seen
less increase in functionality and innovation as compared to the
enterprise-level user. Within the forthcoming "Project
12", this situation has been redressed with some useful and (in
some cases) long-overdue features under development:
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Multiple Level Undo will at last become a reality.
Users will be able to step back through commands (including
macros), undoing / redoing actions as they go. This
will be especially useful for users who save their projects
into a shared database repository and where 'saving-as'
really isn't an option.
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A
'Change Highlight' feature will emphasise dates, durations,
work and cost values that have changed as a result of a
scheduling action. With this feature enabled, a novice
user can see at a glance the results of a change to critical
/ noncritical paths or the addition / removal of resource
assignments.
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To
help users understand why a task is scheduled when it is, a
'Task Drivers' feature will also be available. This
will display all the factors that determine a task's
schedule (calendars, predecessors, resource availability
etc.) in an easy to read side pane.
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A
new visual reporting engine will allow users to create
custom graphical reports quickly and easily. Utilising
OLAP technology for the desktop, detailed slice-and-dice
analysis of schedules and budgets can be created by dragging
and dropping data elements within a report.
Please
note that this features list, together with functionality
described below is not exhaustive. As more web-based
information becomes available in the public domain, we'll
provide links as and when we can. |
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Microsoft Project in the enterprise |
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Within
Project 12, significant improvements under the skin have been
made to enhance functionality, scalability and performance.
Global organisations such as AXA (who are on the Technology
Adoption Program) are assisting Microsoft by benchmarking
Project 12 and testing its deployment for projects and processes
worldwide.
Some
key new enterprise functionality includes:
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Server-side scheduling allows a project to be rescheduled
within the Project Web Access (PWA) environment without the
need for using the desktop Project Professional client.
This will greatly assist the project manager making
immediate what-if decisions based around actual and
remaining progress regularly posted to him/her by team
members.
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Similar in execution to Outlook / Exchange, an active
caching of data will greatly speed up the opening, saving
and publishing of project information from the desktop to
the server. Any latency in a network environment will
be overcome, allowing project managers to pass data to/from
the server without having to wait long periods for the
system to catch up.
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An
unlimited number of custom fields will allow a programme
office much greater power and flexibility in how portfolios
of projects are managed and analysed. In addition,
these codes can now be created by using the PWA client,
providing a greater degree of control and security.
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With the announced acquisition of the UMT portfolio
management application, enterprise users will soon have much
greater access to decision-making capabilities that affect
all projects across an entire enterprise.
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Microsoft Project Conference
Conclusions |
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All in
all the Microsoft Project Conference can be seen as a great
success. All delegates found benefit from not only having
inside-track information about what's to come from Microsoft's
developers, but also in achieving a greater understanding about
the technology that is currently available, together with a
clearer understanding of the global project management market
and its future direction.
Whilst
we still have to wait until later this year for new software to
be released by Microsoft to the worldwide market, we can be
confident that the wait will be worth it. As a partner
involved in the beta test of Project 12, Project Learning personnel
are currently busy getting to grips with the ins and outs of the
system, ready to provide training, consultancy and advice as and
when Project 12 (or whatever it will be called) eventually hits
the streets.
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December prize draw winners |
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The five winners of the December draw of new newsletter
subscribers are:
Each of them will receive a $10 / £10 Amazon voucher with the
compliments of Project Learning Limited. |
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