Microsoft Project is famous as a desktop project management tool. However, it is expected that by the end of 2021, 27-30% of workers will work at home. That’s why companies and administrators are looking at Microsoft Project alternatives.
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Why Looking for Microsoft Project Alternatives?
MS Project is a powerful tool with all the features you need for project management. However, it is not available to everyone. Microsoft Project is a comprehensive, easy desktop-based tool for running plans and streamlining workflows. But in the cloud and availability era, you can’t limit how and when data is accessed. On top of that, there are some limitations to Microsoft Project when it comes out of the box. Let me introduce some of them.
Here are five main reasons to consider Microsoft Project alternatives:
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Distributed Work
The pandemic of 2020 has altered the design we work with. Even after the pandemic, more than 50% of people work full-time at home.
Microsoft Project was traditionally a desktop application. It makes it challenging to adapt to distributed teams. Collaboration and task management are also tricky for desktop applications.
Microsoft Office 365 can help you with this problem to some extent. However, small and medium-sized companies are likely to be expensive soon.
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Complexity
The ability to make MS Project powerful also brings complexity. MS Project provides all of the following features:
- Project planning, budgeting, and scheduling
- Resource management
- Portfolio management
- Collaboration and communication
- Reporting
But not all of these features are necessary for every team member. As a result, MS Project is great for senior managers, but it’s still not good for the whole team.
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Collaboration
Perfect collaboration is what all teams want when they use project management tools. Microsoft Project makes it challenging to share data with stakeholders. You won’t be able to access your data unless you’re running Microsoft Project. For perfect project collaboration, communication within tasks is essential. When using Microsoft Project, team members cannot communicate or comment on activities within each lesson. You cannot update assigned tasks within a task.
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Tracking Status
Microsoft Project makes it challenging to track task progress in real-time. It is impossible to determine where the task is at a specific time, is pending, in progress, or completed.
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Pricing
While many project management tools offer free plans to users, Microsoft Project does not provide free features to users.
First of all, the Basic plan can plan and execute projects, and it costs $10 per user per month. All programs are paid, starting at $7 per user per month.
The second range plan presents all of the peculiarities of the Basic plan, plus support command and writing. The fee is $30 per user per month. Finally, the Enterprise tier adds enterprise capabilities and portfolio management, with $55 per user per month. In addition, Office 365 fees are required. As a result, MS Project will quickly become expensive for small and medium-sized businesses.
Bottom Line
Microsoft project management is also the best tool for project management, but companies have to adopt the Microsoft project alternatives due to the above reasons. On the other hand, Microsoft project alternatives are performing very well and also free of cost.
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