PMFORUM Breaking News

Reported by A. Matt Piazza in Seattle, Washington, USA

Microsoft has unveiled a new vision for its Microsoft Office Project line this week in conjunction with the opening of the Microsoft Office Project Conference 2007 in Seattle. The two-day conference opened at the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle, USA, on 29 October 2007 with over 1,500 in attendance. The new vision and several other significant announcements of interest to users of Microsoft Project were included in a press release issued by Microsoft this week.

The following points were also emphasized during his opening keynote speech at the Conference on Monday by Michael Angiulo, General Manager, Microsoft Project Business Unit.

Microsoft Office Project Vision: Microsoft's vision for Project is to broaden the scope of Enterprise Project Management by bringing it to a broader set of people through the tools they use every day and continue to build on the innovations that are included in the current release, as well as continue to aim to deliver ‘best in class’ IT solutions to the enterprise. By building on those innovations, we're moving towards the vision of broadening Project's appeal to beyond just the Project Manager. By building on those innovations, Microsoft is moving towards that vision of broadening Office Project's appeal to beyond just the Project Manager.

When looking ahead at the next version of Project, Microsoft plans on focusing on the following:

• Flexibility and power: Tools such as Microsoft Office Excel make it easy for a project manager to start tracking their team’s tasks. Today users choose between Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Project based on whether ease of getting started or powerful reporting is more important. The next version of Project will make that choice go away by providing the richness of Project’s insight and reporting to projects that are earlier in the cycle and not fully defined. Project will be as easy and flexible to use as Office Excel, and will offer rich scheduling and reporting both on the desktop and in Microsoft Office Project Server.


• Deeper office integration: Building on the 2007 reporting advancements in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Visio, Microsoft plans on making project communication in applications like Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint and Microsoft Office Outlook easy with the visual timeline reports.


• Online collaboration and editing: Office Project 2007 introduced great new ways to track tasks and update your projects’ status online through Project Web Access (PWA). The next version of Project will continue the move from a desktop-centric application to web-based collaboration by enabling the project manager to edit their projects directly in PWA with features like multiple-level undo and change highlighting.

Project User Certification Update: As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to customers, Microsoft is also announcing that 2 of the Office Project 2007 user certifications (MCTS: Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007, MCTS: Enterprise Project Management with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007) are now available and the first set of exams will be given at the Project Conference. These certifications are aimed at helping users get the greatest value from their investment in Office Project 2007 as well as helping them become more effective project managers and delivering greater value to the organizations they serve.

Microsoft Office Project 2007 Momentum: Microsoft Office Project continues to see tremendous momentum in the industry, and is generating tremendous momentum among our customers and partners who have committed to building on the Office Project 2007 Platform Solution. The Microsoft Office Project family now has more than 20 million licenses sold, with a diverse customer base - from boutique firms to multinational corporations (roughly 80% of Project Server customers are organizations with more than 50,000 employees) - running into the thousands.

More information on Office Project 2007 can be located at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/default.aspx.

The Seattle event is one of two Microsoft Office Project Conferences scheduled for 2007; the second will be held in Madrid, Spain in early December. According to Microsoft, these conferences aim to enable individuals and organizations to develop a better understanding of the end-to end capabilities of the Microsoft 2007 family of products and to help further advance their Project Management Potential. Information about the Microsoft Project Conference 2007 in Seattle can be found at http://www.msprojectconference.com/indexUS.htm.

A. Matt Piazza International Correspondent USA based in Texas A Matt Piazza, PMP, is an international correspondent for PMForum based in the Dallas Ft. Worth metropolitan area of north Texas, USA. He is also principal consultant for Delta Solutions, a project management consultancy specializing in project management office (PMO) and enterprise project management (EPM) services. Matt has over 20 years experience in professional project management. He has a B.S. in Industrial Distribution from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in the USA. He has been employed in various PM leadership and support positions by ADP, EDS, Rapp Collins, Raytheon, TI and several other major US technology firms. He is a former president of the PMI Dallas Chapter and the DFW chapter of the Microsoft Project Association. He has a PMP® certification from PMI®, and is a Microsoft Project Enterprise Black Belt expert and instructor. More information about Matt Piazza can be found at http://www.pmforum.org/pm%20forum%20team/index.htm#Piazza Matt can be contacted at piazzam@deltasol.net.