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Microsoft Project 2003 Built for Real World
Dated: 1/30/2005
Concurrent with last month's release of other components of Microsoft Corp.'s Office 2003, the company released a 2003 version of Project that is aimed at improved interaction with mainstream Office tools and data stores.
In eWEEK Labs' review of Project 2003, which starts at $599, with upgrade prices beginning at $349, we found an impressive effort to bring powerful time and resource visualization and management aids to the desks of users who don't have "project manager" in their job titles.
Previous project management tools have often been better at presenting optimistic assumptions or reflecting selective reporting of facts, but Project 2003 is genuinely aimed at working with real-world knowledge and minimizing redundant data collection or data entry effort.
The product offers users continuing context-sensitive guidance from an interactive Project Guide. We found this much more useful than online help that needs to be deliberately summoned and interrupts tasks. The Project Guide is always available and integrated into the tools. Additional help resources are also available.
To function in an everyday environment of differing expectations, Project 2003 users can employ the product's capable Baselines monitoring tools that take snapshots of the state of the project at any point to provide either historical notes or reference points for subsequent analysis.
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