Effective management and monitoring is the key to ensuring that large-scale projects stay on track and within budget. Project 2003, the new version of Microsoft's project management package, offers project managers and planners the tools to effectively organise and manage both small-scale and highly complex projects.

It's available in two versions, both featuring the same core functionality. For the lone project manager, the Standard edition dispenses with many of the collaborative features, while remaining competitively priced. The Professional version, however, offers a number of extra features for those needing to get the best from shared data and resources.

Project 2003 can best be described as a timeline-based scheduling and costing tool. That's an oversimplification of what it does, but those who need to manage simple or complex projects and monitor the tasks, resources and costs along the way will find that Project 2003 has everything covered within one interface. The main interface consists of the task list and Gantt chart. It's rather like an interactive wall planner that allows tasks to be tracked across selected time slices. Tasks can be prioritised and resources assigned and adjusted to resolve conflicts or over-allocations. Project 2003's scheduling engine makes it easy to change one work item and see how it will affect the rest of the project. Hyperlinks to other documents or web pages can be added to the task list and, with Project Professional, it's also possible to add resources from the Active Directory service or Exchange Server address book.

The basic reporting tools haven't changed a great deal since the previous version. Information can still be bundled together to form groups for easier viewing of key project dates. For example, it's possible to choose a task usage view, and then group by various criteria such as complete or incomplete, giving at-a-glance project updates by category or status.

Keeping tabs on version changes is simple thanks to the Compare Project Versions tool, with easy-to-understand indicators clearly identifying any differences, such as tasks that have been added or deleted.

Printing has also been improved, with wizards allowing a variety of documents to be output in hard copy form more easily. This enables project related information to be shared more effectively with team members, project managers or clients while away from the office.

Baseline monitoring tools allow snapshots of the current project to be taken at any point, which is useful for providing historical notes or reference points for subsequent analysis.

It's a fairly daunting program to begin with, but ongoing context-sensitive help is available via the task pane-based interactive Project Guide. It's less obtrusive than the Office Assistant of old, and offers invaluable assistance when performing unfamiliar tasks.

Many aspects of project management can be achieved using little more than a spreadsheet, and an Excel template is included for those who prefer to start by producing a basic task list in Excel and then transferring it into Project later on. It even offers the flexibility to custom map fields if desired.

The exporting of data into Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio is simple thanks to the presentation wizard, but the full Enterprise Project Management (EPM) component provides an impressive array of collaborative features. Project tasks can appear in Outlook's Calendar view alongside appointments, and users can update their progress on Calendar entries and report their status back to Microsoft Project Server directly.

Of course, the full cost of deploying Microsoft's EPM - which requires Project Professional, Office 2003, Project Server, Project Web Access 2003 and Windows Server 2003 - needs to be carefully evaluated. However, the high degree of data integration and of network resource usage look good on paper at least, and offer a useful glimpse of just what can be achieved with Office 2003.

Project 2003 is a powerful tool that provides instant access to the data and analysis crucial to effective project management. Which version to opt for will need careful consideration, but anyone whose job it is to manage projects on a regular basis will quickly find Project 2003 invaluable to their work.

Contact: Microsoft 0870 601 0100
www.microsoft.com/project

System requirements:

• Windows 2000 (with SP3) or XP
• 233MHz Pentium class processor
• 128MB of Ram
• 250MB of free hard disk space

Price details:
RRP: Standard edition £474 (£403.40 ex VAT)
Professional edition £799.99 (£680.84 ex VAT)