User:Bbhoward/sandbox

Introduction
Microsoft Project (MSP, MSProject, Project or winproj) is a software application written by Microsoft. Its purpose is to help plan and manage project schedules, and it does this by allowing the user (project manager or schedule manager) to define and organise the tasks required to complete the project. Basic information such as task name, task duration and task dependencies are added to the schedule in order to produce a Gantt chart. Critical Path Analysis is performed automatically. Project is a highly sophisticated tool, and many other types of information can be associated with tasks, including resources (creating assignments), costs, work (effort), constraints, calendars etc. A large set of customisable fields are also available.

History
Microsoft Project was initially proposed by Microsoft's Manager of Product Development, Alan M. Boyd as an internal tool to help manage the huge number of software projects that were in development at any time inside the company. Boyd wrote the specification and engaged a local Seattle company to develop the prototype.

The first commercial version of Project was released for DOS in 1984. Microsoft bought all rights to the software in 1985 and released version 2. Version 3 for DOS was released in 1986. Version 4 for DOS was the final DOS version, released in 1986. The first Windows version was released in 1990, (it was Microsoft’s 3rd Windows-based application) and was labelled version 1 for Windows.

In 1991 a Macintosh version was released. Development continued until Microsoft Project 4.0 for Mac in 1993. In 1994, Microsoft stopped development of most of its Mac applications and did not offer a new version of Office until 1998, after the creation of the new Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit the year prior. The Mac Business Unit never released an updated version of Project, and later versions do not run natively on Mac OS X.

Microsoft Project 95 was the first to use common Office menus.

Microsoft Project 98 was the first to use Tahoma font in the menu bars and to contain Office Assistant, like all Office 97 applications. Project 98 SR-1 was a major service release addressing several issues in Project 98

Versions were released in 1992 (v3), 1993 (v4), 1995 (4.1a), 1998 (9.0), 2000 (10.0), 2002 (11.0), 2003 (12.0), 2007 (13.0) and 2010 (14.0). There was no Version 2 on the Windows platform; the original design spec was augmented with the addition of macro capabilities and the extra work required to support a macro language pushed the development schedule out to early 1992 (Version 3).

Project data types
Each project schedule can contain up to four different data types.

1. Project information - contains information about the project schedule, eg Start Date, Status Date, Title etc. This information occurs only once in a project.

2. Tasks - each task (or WBS item) identifies a single work item on a project. Tasks can (and should) be organised into hierarchical structures (representing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)). Leaf (or node tasks) represent the actual work items, and Project automatically calculates the many of the values for the summary (non leaf) tasks from the leaf tasks below them, including values such as work (by default expressed as hours) and costs. Cost and work values can be manually entered against each task, however best practise is to allow project to calculate these values instead when resources are assigned to the task. Tasks contain specific information, eg Name, Start Date, Duration etc. A project schedule can hold many thousands of tasks.

3. Resources - there are three different resource types in Project (work, material and cost) each with differing capabilities. Work resources are used to represent people, equipment, or facilities that are assigned to a task and are not consumed during the completion of that task. Material resources are used to track consumable resources, such as steel, that are to be used in the fulfilment of the project. Cost resources are used to track budgetary items, such as travel costs, that are not dependent on the amount of work or the duration of a task.

4. Assignments - the association of a resource to a task is called an assignment. Each task can have zero, one or many resources "assigned" to it.

In order for a project schedule to be created, it must contain both Project information and tasks. Resources and Assignments are optional, though having Resources and not creating Assignments adds no value to the project schedule.

Editions
Project is available in two editions, Standard and Professional; both editions are available either as 32 or 64bit options. The Professional edition includes all the features of the Standard version, and includes the additional features identified separately below.

User controlled scheduling
User-controlled scheduling offers flexible choices for developing and managing projects. Select either Auto or Manually scheduled; manual scheduled tasks let you set values in Start, Finish, and Duration fields, leave them blank, or insert notes for future reference

The Ribbon
The ribbon (aka the Fluent UI) finally found it’s way into Project 2010. An interactive ribbon guide is available at http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/ribbon_guide.aspx

Timeline
The timeline view allows the user to build a high level graphical overview of the project schedule. The view can easily be copied and pasted into PowerPoint, Word, or any other application.

SharePoint 2010 list synchronisation (pro only)
You can synchronize SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Project Professional 2010 project task status updates for you and team members.

Inactive tasks (pro only)
Inactive tasks helps you can easily experiment with your project plan and perform what-if analysis.

The Team Planner view (pro only)
The new Team Planner shows resources and work over time, and helps spot problems and resolve issues

The ability to connect to Project Server 2010 (pro only)
Project Server is the key component of Microsoft’s EPM solution.

File format
Project's proprietary file format is .mpp.

Other
Microsoft Project Professional and Microsoft Project Server are the cornerstones of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) product.