Microsoft has announced that its graphical project management tool, Project for Windows, will be available by next month. A member of the Microsoft family of Windows applications, it shares the same standard graphical user interface as Excel for Windows and Word for Windows. Microsoft says that the graphical user interface makes project management easier and more interactive than a character-based program, and the company claims that the benefits are most apparent in real world modelling, interactive data entry and editing, and in the ability to customise both environment and output. Scheduling can be resource driven so that task completion time is calculated on the basis of resource assign-ments, or it can be duration-driven, independent of resource assignments. Resources can be assigned on a partial basis and workloads may be balanced across multiple projects or sub-projects. Project progress may be tracked in several ways, including planned versus actual completion dates, hours worked, or costs. As regards interactive data entry and editing, users can enter data in either traditional or spreadsheet form. Information can be entered at any time, and Microsoft says that built-in outlining assists in organising and sequencing tasks. Group linking eliminates the job of individually linking tasks, and it can highlight related activities then link them sequentially. The user can customise several features including the Gantt chart, palette information in Pert boxes, menu items, views to workspace set-up, and re-usable reports. Project for Windows also allows files to be saved in different formats, and it copies, cuts and pastes to other Windows applications. Version 1.0 requires an 80286 or 80386-based personal computer with an EGA, VGA or Hercules graphics card running under MS-DOS 3.0 or higher, and a minimum 1Mb of random access memory. It cost UKP500 and current users of Microsoft Project may upgrade for UKP120. A corporate licence is UKP400.
