Microsoft Project 2007 - Essay Example

Microsoft project 2007 features Introduction Microsoft project 2007 is a program designed to help project managers monitor their work by organising financial, schedules and job documentation. Managing a project is a field activity that has a lot of data creation and processing to give the final output which helps in policy formulation to achieve desired results (Schwalbe, 2010). It provides features that enables plan development for instance when the manager is organising a health campaign in an area.

After developing the action plan, it helps them delegate duties to the employees so that one is accountable to his/her position. Financial and other material resources are also allocated to the specific stages of project implementation. Finally, it helps managers track the implementation to make sure faults within the system is addressed. This software is not installed with other Microsoft applications when setting up the operating system. Users can download it from the internet or buy it from selected outlets.

Microsoft project 2007 features The software offers features that help program managers handle their human resource issues: it has a platform that lists the number of employees available for a certain project. These employees have their leaves and off days that they have to honour; the system prepares a work schedule that allocates duties to individuals and teams, so they can be efficient in monitoring employee issues. This work schedule also helps monitor if implementation is still within the set time limits (Chatfield & Johnson, 2007).

It allows managers to draft a budget and payment sheet for a company so they can track employee salary and wage figures. This helps the management avoid complaints from employees over payments as it provides evidence on the same. There are also some resources meant for project implementation that is released to employees who are in charge. In cases where employees and the tools they use are shared, then the managers can create a system of sharing this resource using Microsoft project 2007, to ensure equal treatment.

For instance, when an organizational vehicle is shared among the departments, it creates a schedule which ensures the various departments use the vehicle at specific times during the week depending on that organisation’s work schedule. The software has an added feature called the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) that provides a template which help project managers to plan their human resource plan. This is an added feature which further gives tutorials on how to go about reviewing employee performance (Shelly et al, 2008).

The interview The employee says they use this software since the nature of their work is restricted to the field. After taking data from the samples marked in the field, they manipulate it using Microsoft project 2007 and then send the output to Microsoft excel, which makes graphs and charts to show trends. This resource and their output can also be shared among different teams in an organization by networking; this helps their teams ensure coordination by sharing outputs at specific levels when executing the project.

Since his organization has a unique working environment, they were able to custom Microsoft project 2007 to their specific work plan which enhanced ease of use. The program however cannot give a prediction of the amount processed goods produced after a certain period based on the amount of raw materials. This is because values are entered by name, and not amount. This makes it difficult for their company to monitor resource use. References Chatfield, C. S., & Johnson, T. D. (2007). Microsoft Office Project 2007 step by step.

Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press. Schwalbe, K. (2010). Information technology Project Management (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology/Cengage Learning. Shelly, G. B., Cashman, T. J., & Vermaat, M. (2008). Microsoft Office 2007: introductory concepts and techniques (Windows Vista ed.). Boston, Mass.: Thomson Course Technology.