In the development of project management software, Microsoft's related products have played a key role, and its evolution has profoundly affected the actual project management operations of various industries around the world.
Microsoft’s Early Acquisitions and Startups
In 1985, Microsoft bought the copyright of a project management software from a company in the United States of America. Based on this, it released the second version of its professional software, named Microsoft Project 1.0 for DOS, which officially entered the field of commercial project management software.
In 1990, Microsoft released Project for Windows 1.0 for the Windows 3.0 graphical operating system that had just debuted at that time. This was the first mainstream project management software in the world to run under a graphical interface environment. It replaced the boring command line with intuitive charts and gave users a brand new operating experience.
Rapid iteration and recognition in the 1990s
In the 1990s, Microsoft launched a new version of the Project software about every two years. Each new version improved in terms of functionality. At the same time, the operating interface and processes were also being simplified, making the software easier to master and use by ordinary project managers.
In April 1992, Project 3.0 for Windows appeared. In the same year, in a competition with more than 280 evaluation indicators organized by the authoritative American "PC Magazine" magazine, it emerged among eight well-known project management software and was recommended by the magazine editor as the best choice.
Successful applications in the enterprise market
In 1994, a software called Project 4.0 for Windows was released and it was a great success. At that time, many world-class large companies took action, including Boeing, the giant in the aerospace field. They eagerly devoted themselves to using this software to manage their complex array of engineering projects, thus conclusively proving the software's ability to deal with projects with high degree of difficulty.
At that time, in order to enable the software to be widely used in China, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences specially developed a Chinese language tool called "Chinese Companion" at the same time. This made Project 4.0 popular in many Chinese construction, aviation, aerospace and other units at that time, and the application results were particularly obvious.
A major upgrade for the new century
Following the new trends of the Internet and market economy, Microsoft has incorporated many new project management concepts in subsequent versions and made huge improvements in software mechanisms. In particular, the initial function of collaboration and communication using the Internet has been added, with the aim of raising project management efficiency to a new level.
On July 19, 2000, Microsoft (China) Co., Ltd. officially released the Chinese version of Microsoft Project 2000 in Beijing with an eye on the new century. This version focuses on strengthening Web-based collaborative work capabilities to allow project team members to carry out multi-directional communication and share data, and is more consistent with the multi-person collaboration environment of large enterprises.
Product family segmentation and integration
Microsoft provides different versions for different users. The standard version and the professional version are suitable for most project personnel to use. Its functions can help managers dynamically manage resources and analyze project status. The server version is just beginning to appear and is specially built for enterprises to centrally store and share standardized project information.
In 2010, Microsoft launched the Project 2010 family. This family covers products such as Project Professional 2010, Project Server 2010 and Project Web App. Among them, Project Portfolio Server 2007, which was previously released independently, has been integrated into the enterprise project management solution, thus forming a more unified product line.
The continued evolution of modern capabilities
The modern version of Project provides a more powerful data visualization function. Users can use word art and charts to create dynamic visual effects reports, and can even apply such effects to presentation animations, and no longer need to export data to other programs for processing.
There are many new report templates set up in the software. For example, the "burndown chart" report can visually present the project's planned work hours, completed work hours, and remaining work hours in the form of trend lines, allowing project managers to easily and quickly determine whether the project has deviated from the original schedule. This is in line with the requirements of today's popular agile project management methods to a large extent.
Starting from the DOS era all the way to cloud collaboration, in what ways have project management tools actually changed your work efficiency? You are sincerely welcome to share your own experiences in the comment area. If you feel that this article is really helpful to you, don't forget to like and share it.
