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Microsoft Project is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft which is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. The first version of Microsoft Project was released for DOS in 1984 by a company working for Microsoft. Microsoft bought all rights to the software in 1985 and released version 2. Version 3 for DOS was released in 1986. Version 4 for DOS was the final DOS version, released in 1986. The first Windows version was released in 1990, and was labelled version 1 for Windows. An interesting thing to note is that the first version for DOS introduced the concept of link lines (dependency lines) between tasks in the Gantt chart.

Microsoft Project was the company's third Windows-based application, and within a couple of years of its introduction WinProj was the dominant PC-based project management software. Although branded as a member of the Microsoft Office family, it has never been included in any of the Office suites. It is available currently in two editions, Standard and Professional.

The application creates critical path schedules, although critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons are available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart. Additionally, Project can recognize different classes of users. These different classes of users can have differing access levels to projects, views, and other data. Custom objects such as calendars, views, tables, filters and fields are stored in an enterprise global which is shared by all users.

Feature Description

Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost equals the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary tasks and finally to the project level. Resource definitions (people, equipment and materials) can be shared between projects using a shared resource pool. Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Resource rates are used to calculate resource assignment costs which are rolled up and summarized at the resource level. Each resource can be assigned to multiple tasks in multiple plans and each task can be assigned multiple resources, and the application schedules task work based on the resource availability as defined in the resource calendars. All resources can be defined in an enterprise-wide resource pool.

MS Project presumes additional physical raw materials are always available without limit. Therefore it cannot determine how many finished products can be produced with a given amount of raw materials. This makes MS Project unsuitable for solving problems of available materials constrained production. Additional software is necessary to manage a complex facility that produces physical goods.

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