Why I Dislike Microsoft Project for Management Consulting

Sort of as a follow-on to the post about project management and b-schools, I thought that I would post something (a bit one-sided) about the use of Microsoft Project in management consulting projects. I dislike the tool and sometimes even discourage the use of the tool by consultants running projects. Here's some reasons why:

1. While project management is a function that moves things ahead, Microsoft Project as a tool can create barriers to communication. For the average user, there's generally not enough flexibility to do things like highlight workstreams in an engagement, create a view of danger/risk points in a project, show progress to plan plainly, and summarize a project plan on one chart.
2. Because the tool is not part of everyone's basic software configuration, there are additional barriers to communication because the native file format often cannot be easily exchanged with clients, colleagues, etc. who need to work and update things in real-time. Project plans in Microsoft Project need to get exported to things like PDF files, etc.
3. Updating the project plan can become a project in of itself and prevent the project manager from doing other important things like communicating with stakeholders, managing risks, working to solve problems, and completing tasks.

Getting the theme behind my dislike for the software?

I much prefer using something like Powerpoint or Excel for developing project plans. I like Powerpoint because of its visual nature (which can be helpful in managing projects and leading people). I like Excel because of its greater structure over Powerpoint and ubiquitous availability to business people.

Am I right? Probably not entirely, but I have definitely seen the types of recurring problems described above in many engagements. The negatives often outweigh the benefits of using a more structured tool fit for purpose.

Comments

[Eric Brown]

Steve - Great post.

I agree...as you can see from my recent blog post listed in your TrackBack section.

MS Project is a good planning tool, but many people use it as a crutch . The tool is good for planning tasks and assigning resources, but not so good at communicating much about the project.

As far as MS Project for consulting projects, I've seen it used but not often very successfully.

[Eric Brown]

BTW - I hope your move to the LA area has gone well.

[Michael]

Owww, I wonder how often you actually have used project.

It's simply printing to PDF, just pasting a picture in word. Lack of communication is not to blame on a piece of software, it to blame on the style of PM (desk warrior instead of managing by walking around)

Same with risk (critical path) and progress can be easily shown, ie I always demand risks to be included in the task.

Anyway I am not advocating MS project, however I see that you are highlighting issues which are of a different kind; lack of talking in the same language as the intended audience.

Cheers,
Michael

[Robert A. Dudley, PMP]

I would like to point out one flaw in your wording. MS Project does not produce project plans. It only produces project schedules. Yes, I do realize Microsoft says it produces project plans but they are incorrect. Does MS project produce communication issues? Well if the tool is used incorrectly yes. I have used MS Project successfully for many years and have had no problems with communicating the intentions of the schedule or project. Hence this is why a Communication Plan is developed. Project server is very good at communicating the schedule along with several free Project viewers. These are valuable assets for a consultant to have.
I do agree that Excel and Power Point are great tools but, they are very time consuming to use as a project schedule management tool compared to a skilled MS project user.

Enjoy the blog keep it up.
Rob Dudley, PMP

[Leah]

Projjex.com is a great new site that does a fabulous job of project management. It’s completely browser-based, really easy to use, and has a free version. Cool videos too - I love it!

[Anthony Mallgren]

Hello Steve,

First, I would like to say thank you for your contributions. Your blog is a great resource for anyone musing management consulting practices!

I would also like to explain a bit about the new Microsoft product stack, in case it is of value to your or your readers.

Microsoft has recently undertaken a new innitiative, about the time when Ray Ozzie came aboard and brought Groove to Microsoft. In light of online office suites (similar to Microsoft's early NetDocs effort), Microsoft decided to take a rich client/server approach to their product offerings.

Your primary concerns seems the lack of communcation and collaboration. Have you explored the server side apps (MOSS 2007, Project Server 2007, Team Foundation Server, etc)?

While these solutions are not for the small budget consulting gigs, I believe they are instrumental for the success of large and scalable solutions. Project risks and tasks can be tracked (and entered/viewed by anyone you specify), but the real value is rolling up metrics through different division to provide dashboards for the business leadership team. This help them make since of how different divisions are operating based on KPIs you help them to define.

This also addresses the concern of everyone not having Project 2007 on their desktop, as they can still contribute through a web UI. If you have a development team, Visual Studio can be used to bull down bug fixes in the solutions, etc.

While agree that Project 2007 does not preform the tasks that you listed well, I think it is similar to saying that a Porchse is a poor offroad car (buy a Hummer :-)).

Any feedback?

[Steve Shu]

Anthony,

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like the collaboration tools can address a number of the communication, collaboration, analysis, and reporting issues that I describe above.

There are definitely numerous projects that can benefit from structured management tools.

Steering and reporting are some of the most important aspects of consulting projects. So long as the net-net use of tools can benefit the project, then I am for them. Definitely the need for tools becomes greater as a project scales very large.

[andrew]

With regards to generating more "universal" files that convey more than simply the schedule (but in a really friendly way), a great alternative to excel or PowerPoint is a tool called swiftlight (swiftlightsoftware.com). Very simple to use and has converters to import/export from/to ms project, and can also export into PowerPoint. Our group started using this at work and "consumers" of project data seem to really like the simplicity (in comparison to a nasty detailed ms project gantt chart)