Microsoft Project Professional 2002

Rating:
Summary: Would be great except ...
Review: If the core (Microsoft Project 2002) didn't have so many flaws this would be a major step forward in PM software. It certainly has excellent collaboration features and attempts to glue together an enterprise-wide PM system, much like industrial strength applications such as Team Results (Niku) and Primavera's P3 product do.

However, what continues to hold this back as a slick looking, but not so useful, tool is the fact that it still cannot correctly compute earned value, and the lack of emphasis on planning and estimating. It's a wonderful GANTT chart creator if you don't mind it doing what it wants instead of what you want, and comes close to Lotus Notes as a project specific collaboration tool.

If you want to actually plan and control projects though you'll be disappointed. Also, if you are in a large company the chances are you are either mainframe, midrange or Unix centric and the sharepoint server and other MS platforms may raise your total costs of ownership (not to mention wreaking havoc with availability and security vulnerabilities).