Project management with Excel – Making the right choice

MS Excel for project management is a popular topic in many PM forums and community websites. Some people believe that Excel is a kind of PM software. Other people know that this solution can be partially used for managing projects because a set of Excel tools seem to be helpful for project planning and scheduling. You can make your own choice and decide whether you will use MS Excel timeline and diagrams to drive your job.

Meanwhile, to make the right decision you can review the next several facts about PM using Excel highlight advantages of this software as well as point at weak sides of using MS Excel for planning and managing projects:

• Gantt chart. Most people who prefer using Microsoft Excel tools try to design Gantt chart which is a popular way to schedule activities and depict projects on a timeline. It’s true that MS Excel helps design Gantt chart by using diagrams. But Excel tools for diagram building do not allow managing human and material resources. Sometimes installation of special Excel add-in solutions helps associate Gantt chart with information on project resources but in general MS Excel is convenient for building diagrams while it is not the best solution to plan, analyze and monitor project resources.

• Templates. If open a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and try to find a MS Excel template you are likely to get a large list of templates and spreadsheets available for downloading. Due to popularity of Microsoft products many people try to use MS Excel software to plan and manage projects yet they do not realize that Excel is designed for making calculations in cell and rows and creating diagrams but not for planning projects and estimating project activities. The fact is that MS Excel dashboard is convenient for calculating project data and using project templates but it is insufficient for managing tasks and sharing project data.
• Multi-user access. Excel based PM is not adapted to teamwork and group collaboration so users have to use and change an Excel file by turn, having no simultaneous access to the file and getting no opportunity to keep project data in a centralized database.

The right understanding of both advantages and disadvantages of using project management Excel sheets, templates, files and diagrams allows you to make the right choice regarding that software. Meanwhile, most people who have reached success and earned great achievements in delivering projects will say that originally designed the software will be the best choice anyway. MS Excel is a great solution but it is not originally designed for project management.

VIP Task Manager is an example that contains original tools for planning, scheduling, measuring, monitoring, controlling and reporting tasks and processes within projects. Probably, your choice will be in favor of VIP Task Manager because this solution is designed to help project managers and teams to deliver projects on time and do tasks on schedule and within budget. You can download an evaluation copy of VIP Task Manager for free from this website.