I read with interest the previous discussion regarding MSP –v- P3 (I couldn’t reply on that thread for some reason).
I have recently become embroiled a little in this debate when discussing the merits (?) of MSP when a colleague said :
Touching on the future, we need to be aware that MSoft has done a licensing deal with the UK government on all its products, and I am now beginning to see public sector clients requesting programmes in MSP. This wont go away of course, so is there a simple way forward?
This all came about because MSoft have dropped the .mpx format that was used by many software developers as a relatively simple way of allowing data to be transferred between different project management software. Our dilemma was that, as users of Asta Powerproject, MSP files were inaccessible and we didn’t want to regress to using MSP in parallel.
I spoke to the friendly people at Asta (try doing that with MSoft!) and their reply was:
I also know that we live in Microsoft world and they have made life a little more difficult by allowing MPX import, but disabling MPX export from MSP 2000/2003. So you can send someone a project from Powerproject in an MPX format - and they can open it. They cant send it back though!
So for that reason we have developed (and give away) an Add-In to Powerproject and MS Project that reads & writes to a common XML file format.
I have asked our Help Desk to put on a CD and send to you. You can freely distribute this within Buro4 and its clients.
We were also discussing ‘Programme Management’ (as in the management of a portfolio of projects:
We [Asta] have been very successful recently with various collection of projects in a single database - to allow cross-project reporting. This is where Powerproject scores over MS Project as it is essentially a collection of dispersed projects, rather than a coherent whole. The only really serious completion is P3e, but it is at least 3-times more expensive than PP! For this to work effectively we developed Asta Site Progress - for remote (cheap) progress feedback.
The final comment was:
Even in MSP 2003 they have the fantastic fundamental flaw of only allowing one link between two tasks. ie you cannot have a SS and FF between the same tasks - so once one has started there are no restraints! The output is also pretty poor, and of course only one task per line, etc...
My apologies if this has sounded like an advertisement for Asta Powerproject but I think we should all be aware there is useful project management software around other than P3 and MSP!
Asta Developments can be contacted at Asta Developments [1]
Regards
David
dbordoli@burofour.co.uk [2]
To find out mor about Buro Four [3] visit us on the web
I have recently become embroiled a little in this debate when discussing the merits (?) of MSP when a colleague said :
Touching on the future, we need to be aware that MSoft has done a licensing deal with the UK government on all its products, and I am now beginning to see public sector clients requesting programmes in MSP. This wont go away of course, so is there a simple way forward?
This all came about because MSoft have dropped the .mpx format that was used by many software developers as a relatively simple way of allowing data to be transferred between different project management software. Our dilemma was that, as users of Asta Powerproject, MSP files were inaccessible and we didn’t want to regress to using MSP in parallel.
I spoke to the friendly people at Asta (try doing that with MSoft!) and their reply was:
I also know that we live in Microsoft world and they have made life a little more difficult by allowing MPX import, but disabling MPX export from MSP 2000/2003. So you can send someone a project from Powerproject in an MPX format - and they can open it. They cant send it back though!
So for that reason we have developed (and give away) an Add-In to Powerproject and MS Project that reads & writes to a common XML file format.
I have asked our Help Desk to put on a CD and send to you. You can freely distribute this within Buro4 and its clients.
We were also discussing ‘Programme Management’ (as in the management of a portfolio of projects:
We [Asta] have been very successful recently with various collection of projects in a single database - to allow cross-project reporting. This is where Powerproject scores over MS Project as it is essentially a collection of dispersed projects, rather than a coherent whole. The only really serious completion is P3e, but it is at least 3-times more expensive than PP! For this to work effectively we developed Asta Site Progress - for remote (cheap) progress feedback.
The final comment was:
Even in MSP 2003 they have the fantastic fundamental flaw of only allowing one link between two tasks. ie you cannot have a SS and FF between the same tasks - so once one has started there are no restraints! The output is also pretty poor, and of course only one task per line, etc...
My apologies if this has sounded like an advertisement for Asta Powerproject but I think we should all be aware there is useful project management software around other than P3 and MSP!
Asta Developments can be contacted at Asta Developments [1]
Regards
David
dbordoli@burofour.co.uk [2]
To find out mor about Buro Four [3] visit us on the web