Agile Charts

Agile Charts: "What about Microsoft Project?

Software development guru Joel Spolsky puts it this way:

“The trouble with Microsoft Project is that it assumes that you want to spend a lot of time worrying about dependencies… I’ve found that with software, the dependencies are so obvious that it’s just not worth the effort to formally keep track of them.” [see also: critical path in agile projects]

Joel continues:

“Another problem with Project is that it assumes that you’re going to want to be able to press a little button and “rebalance” the schedule… For software, this just doesn’t make sense [in practice]… The bottom line is that Project is designed for building office buildings, not software.”

Joel is a former Microsoft employee, who worked on both Excel and Project. He’s not alone in his views. Chris Peters, Microsoft’s Vice President in charge of Office, also said that Microsoft Project is more appropriate for managing the design of airplanes and buildings, rather than software. [1]

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