So you’re perfectly happy with Microsoft Project 2003 and you can’t think of any good reason to splurge on an upgrade to Microsoft Project 2007. You may want to give it a little more thought because, according to Special Edition: Using Microsoft Project 2007 (ISBN 0-7897-3652-7) by QuantumPM, LLC (Que Publishing), there are seven new features that might make Microsoft Project 2007 worth your money:

 

Multiple Undo – The Multiple Undo feature is one of the most exciting additions to Microsoft Project 2007. It allows you to backtrack through recent changes or undo the most recent series of changes at once.

 

Change Highlighting – When you make a change to a project, the Change Highlighting      feature calls your attention to all fields affected by the change. Project managers can now see the impact of the change as it ripples through the tasks in the project.

 

Visual Reports – Reports have always been an excellent way to examine and share data in Project. New to 2007 are visual reports, which display project information in visual charts, tables or diagrams.

 

Task Drivers – The Task Drivers feature opens a pane on the left side of the screen that displays information that impacts, or drives, the selected task.

 

Cost Resource Type – The cost resource type enables users to identify specific fixed costs on a task, such as travel expenses or delivery charges for materials.

 

Budget Resource – The budget resource feature allows the project manager to define budget at the summary-level task to represent capital budget or overall approved budget for the project

 

3-D Gantt Chart Display – Three-dimensional display of the taskbars in the Gantt Chart view makes the Gantt Chart view more visually appealing and eye-catching, especially when printed to show as a report.

I got involved in this business of project management nearly 12 years ago. Quite a good story some tell me. But I think what amazes me still today is how this business has grown.

 

Many said back then that it was just a ‘wave’. Some of the ‘older’ PMs, the ones who were there already, suggested that the boom was just a fad. They could be heard saying that technology projects were not large enough nor important enough to warrant a seat in the professional world of project management.

 

Man, were they wrong.

But very interestingly, while the ‘boom’ in interest in project management has come from the technology sectors over the past 10 years, I am seeing a renewed interest in formal project management from the more traditional sectors: engineering, construction and aerospace. It’s almost like they woke up over the past year and said “maybe we were wrong to stop learning about project management. Maybe we don’t know it all.”

And then as our classrooms and conference isles site more of this more established set, we see a whole new crowd of ‘kids’ take a major interest in project management. I write this as I fly home from Vancouver – the home of over 10,000 employees working in the Gaming industry. Video games. And guess how old this group is? Young. Very young. This groups looks on the 30 something crowd of PMs as old, established and traditional.

So what am I getting at? I think that the most fascinating part of this business over the next 10 year will be the growth – from all sectors, the hand off from the old to the young and the challenge we will all have to address the needs of all of these communities.

David Barrett