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You need Project....but should you get Standard or Professional?

You have realized you need Project 2010, but now you have to decide if you need the Professional or Standard version. I hope these tips help you in your purchasing decision because it is important you invest in the right version for various reasons.  

If you are going to be using a project server solution, you need to have Project Professional because it has all the collaboration and collection tools that enable you to save plans in the Project Server. If you are not setting up Project Server, you don’t necessarily need Project Professional, but there are several key features you should be aware of.

In KeyStone’s Project 2010 course, Robert Happy, PMP, pointed out some great practices for PMs in any industry, and I wanted to share a couple of the gems I gleaned from the course in terms of which version of the program to purchase. Here are the three items to consider if you are deciding which investment is better for you:

1. Team Planner View
This view in Professional allows you to manage the right mix of people and workloads in a visual and intuitive manner. It lets you click and drag tasks to resources for easy assignments and resource management.

2. SharePoint Synchronization
This feature in Professional enables you to synchronize your tasks to SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 directly from Project and receive updates from team members from SharePoint back into Project.  

3. Inactivate Tool
This tool in Professional lets you render a task inactive without deleting it from the plan. You can conduct what-if analyses or see the impact on the timeline, resource, or cost if a task or group of tasks were no longer included, with the ability to turn them back on at any time

Again, if you plan on connecting to Project Server, you will need Project Professional for all collaboration tools and functionality. So keep these items in mind as you make your decision on which way to go.

I hope these tips were helpful.  For more information on our Project 2010 course and other Project tips, click here.