Microsoft Project 98 is the worlds most popular project management software. It is designed for anyone who oversees a team, plans a budget, juggles schedules, or has deadlines to meet, Microsoft Project 98 keeps your entire team up-to-date and involved.

Microsoft Project 98 is utilised by companies across many industry sectors, to demonstrate this a little more I'll give you a couple of examples of when I personally have used this product in one form or another.

Example 1: Whilst working in a senior management position for an extremely large aluminium fabrication company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we used to utilise Microsoft Project to organise and manage each project. For those of you unfamiliar with the aluminium fabrication industry, it primarily consisted of the cladding (aluminium & glass) of large skyscrapers. As most projects ran into the many millions of dollars you can begin to envisage the complexity of each project and the complex nature of the industry.

Microsoft Project was used for complete project management control, we used it to plan each critical phase of the process, from when the drawing office manager needed to start and prepare the drawings for approval through a "just in time" purchasing arrangement to knowing exactly to the day when the project installation should be completed. As mile stones where plotted and updated it was relatively easy to see at a glance how the overall project was progressing.

Example 2: When tendering for large web site development projects (or other projects for that matter) it is often advantageous to show a complete and detailed project management system, this demonstrates your complete commitment and understanding of the project. It also clearly demonstrates that you are operating with good management systems in place. Once the order comes in, you simply use the previously prepared Microsoft Project to monitor the performance of the design department and to also monitor the overall effectiveness of the estimating department.

Creativity software was certainly not a disappointment of my expectations. In fact, it went beyond what I was expecting to include not only software that helps develop creative ideas and concepts, but a complete course of videos, visuals, and exercises

By this I mean that you can quickly and easily see how much time each department/task has been allocated during tendering, now as long as each department meets these targets you'll not only finish the project on time but you'll also make that small margin you managed to add to the project.

Why should you want to monitor this so precisely, well if you notice a project is taking a significant amount of time, over and above what was allocated, either your estimating is way off, or perhaps the client has asked for some extra bits, which is taking all this extra time and for which you should be able to charge as a variation to order.

One could therefore say that if utilised correctly not only will Microsoft Project pay for itself in a very short time, but it could also dramatically increase your companies bottom line. Comment "Any business worth dealing with should have ample project management systems in place." - Steve.

The easiest way to find out exactly what this program can do is to detail a few of the features it has to offer, now to list all the features would make this an extremely long review, this piece of software has that many, below are just a few features to see a more detailed feature list visit the Microsoft Project site and don't forget to download a trail copy.

Task Splitting
Users can now model interruptions in tasks by simply dragging and dropping task bars on the Gantt chart.

Resource Contouring
Allows users to plan and track work for each resource assigned to a task on a period-by-period basis. Users can apply predefined contours, or can edit planned or actual work according to their own needs.

New Task and Resource Views
Two new views display resource assignments grouped by tasks, or alternatively, task assignments grouped by resources. The time-scaled grid portions of the views allow project managers to view and edit period-by-period planned and actual work or cost information.

Assignment Information Dialog
This new dialog gives the project manager access to assignment-specific information for viewing and editing. It allows users to define the start and finish dates, work rate, tracking information, and cost rates for each assignment in their plan.

Improved Assignment Units
Resource assignment units can now be expressed as a percentage or as a decimal. For example, a resource that is assigned half time to a task can now have an assignment unit of .5 or 50 percent.

Effort Driven Scheduling
Project managers can now control the duration of a task by assigning or removing additional resources. So, for example, a project manager with one person assigned to painting a room could assign a second painter to help, and the task's duration would be cut in half.

Resource Availability Dates
Resource availability dates allow the project manager to define the window of time during which a resource is available for the project.

Resource Rate Tables
Time-stamped resource rates automatically incorporate pay rate changes into project cost calculations. Additionally, each resource can have 5 different rate tables and can be "charged out" at different rates within the same project, depending upon the type of work being performed on an individual assignment.

Microsoft Project Status Date
Project managers can now enter and track using a status date to reflect that project status is accurate as of a given point in time.

Earned Value Calculations and Graphing
Earned value calculations have been updated, and now use time-scaled data and the status date when it is populated. Earned value data can be easily analyzed in a graphical format by using a new wizard to graph the data using Microsoft Excel.

Cross-Project Linking
Project managers can easily model cross-project dependencies by simply dragging and dropping between bars in the Gantt chart. Users are automatically alerted to changes in external dependencies through placeholder tasks in their plans and the new Links Between Projects dialog.

Inserted Projects
A new metaphor for multiproject management allows project managers to consolidate multiple project files with greater control. Users can now insert entire projects at any outline level within a master project, and can drilldown to see all the details associated with the inserted projects.

Resource Pooling
A new resource pooling architecture allows more flexibility in sharing a common pool of resource information across multiple projects.

Increased Limits
Previous limits such as 9999 tasks per projects, and 80 files in a consolidation have been blown away with Microsoft Project 98. The number of tasks in a single project is limited only by user hardware.

Fixed Cost Accrual
Fixed costs can now be accrued using one of three options: accrue at the start, at finish, or prorated over the duration of the task.

User-Entered Actual Costs
Project managers can now directly enter actual costs for tasks and assignments.

New Task Types
The Microsoft Project standard equation for calculating task work and duration is Work = Duration * Units. The user can now control which of these elements is fixed and which is variable, depending upon the way their organization plans.

Scheduling from a Finish Date
Changes in the product's scheduling engine improve the results when scheduling projects from a finish date.

Resource Leveling
The more detailed assignment information in Microsoft Project 98 has facilitated major improvements in the leveling algorithm. The project manager also has greater control in defining how Microsoft Project searches for and resolves work over-allocations when leveling.

Start Week on Setting
Project managers can now define the start of the workweek to be any day.

Fiscal Year Options
Users can now define the way their organization labels fiscal years. If July 1997 is the start of a company's fiscal year, users can define it as part of FY97 or FY98.

Hard and Soft Constraints
Project managers can now control the way Microsoft Project schedules tasks that violate their constraints.

Multiple Critical Paths
This feature allows users to see multiple critical paths in their project schedules.

PERT Analysis
Available through the new Analysis toolbar, PERT analysis lets project managers specify a task's duration by specifying a '"Best," "Worst," and "Most Likely" set of task durations and their associated probabilities and weights.