Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is an application that assists users in the different phases of project management, from developing a project plan, identifying resources for listed tasks, budgeting financial resources, and monitoring accomplished tasks. This application calculates project costs as the user assigns resources to tasks and estimates the amount of work to be done. Project managers can see the progress of a project through a Gantt chart. Resources such as equipment, people, and materials can be assigned their own calendars, so project managers can easily determine what times and on what days a certain resource is available. Resources can be shared among different tasks.

This application allows different authorized users to access project files, though project managers can set the security level so that users of various classes will have differing access levels to project data. For example, some users may have access to the project budget, while some users may only see the tasks assigned to them. Here are some of Microsoft Project’s additional features:

• Timeline view of a project schedule – the view may be copied and pasted to another application such as Word and PowerPoint for sharing, reporting, and presentation.
• Team Planner – enables users to see resources and assigned work over the time needed to accomplish them
• Synchronization with Microsoft SharePoint lists