Introduction

Project management is a broad term that can mean something very formal and specific to one person, but something very organic and pieced together to another. The fact of the matter is that “pieced together” can get you only so far. Spreadsheets, sticky notes, and email are all great tools, and they may work fine for smaller projects, but when you start adding just a few more people working on a project, or just one or two more reports to generate for upper management, project management becomes more complicated. Your blood pressure goes up a smidge and gathering bits and pieces from the various tools you’ve been using to track your projects gets to be more tedious than you may have time for.

Microsoft Project 2010 addresses these issues gracefully and powerfully. I can’t lie; it has a steep learning curve, but it’s absolutely worth your time to figure it out, even at a rudimentary level. The amount of time it ultimately will save you is reason enough. And as you complete projects, you can review the project data to help make decisions about future projects. It’s a thing of beauty, really, especially if you’ve been used to a lot of manual updating and high-maintenance project and resource tracking.