Contemplating Purchase of Project Server/Pro vs. Standard

[George Friend]

I'm working with a client whose senior staff is highly distributed. They're
looking to use Project for some high-level project planning (details may come
later, but right now, it's very high-level).

Project Stanard will serve the need, however, as I understand things, they
then end up e-mailing the Project files around for review and collaboration.
They are connected via VPN, but performance is far from LAN speeds.

My question - Does Project Server help in this scenario? What all can you
do with the web admin. If one or two users have Pro, what can the others do
through the web?

Thanks in advance!

George Friend

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Project Server helps a lot on the speed thing, because only the actual
scheduler has to download the project from the server. All other users (Team
Members, Resource Managers, Executives, other Stakeholders) can see and
interact with the plan through thier web browser, which runs fast over a LAN
or WAN or VPN.

And if performance is an issue for the schedulers, Terminal Services will
speed things up for them, too.

Another benefit for sizeable organizations is that the total cost of
licenses is less because the CAL for Pwoject Web Access (the thin client) is
much cheaper than a full Project Professional license, and only the
schedulers need PPro.

In addition, Project Server (including Project Web Access and Windows
SharePoint Services) adds a lot of functionality beyond standalone Project:
You can control which fields of information are available to various users.
You can associate unlimited numbers of Issues, Risks, and Documents with a
project, or a specific task, or each other.
Everyone gets a personalized home page dashboard that presents important
information such as new assignments, issues they are supposed to work on,
overdue timesheets, etc.
You can easily create and present portfolio views of all projects, or
subsets such as projects associated with specific programs, geographies,
owners, customers, strategic initiatives, etc.
Resource managers can analyze the supply and demand for their people.
You can forecast resource demand by skillset or other resource attributes
such as location.
Schedulers can see a resource's availability before assigning him to a task.
Managers can request and compile scheduled status reports.
Executives can do on-demand analysis of work, cost, availability, earned
value across the enterprise, broken down by time, project type, department,
geography, etc.

The list goes on. You should get a Microsoft salesperson, or better yet a
Certified Partner specializing in Project Server, to present a live demo to
your organization; there's nothing like seeing it in action, and having
someone who can answer the many questions you will have.

--
Reid McTaggart
(e-mail address removed)
Alegient, Inc.
Project Server Experts
Microsoft Certified Partner

 

[Brian K - Project MVP]

Project Server helps a lot on the speed thing, because only the
actual scheduler has to download the project from the server. All
other users (Team Members, Resource Managers, Executives, other
Stakeholders) can see and interact with the plan through thier web
browser, which runs fast over a LAN or WAN or VPN.

And if performance is an issue for the schedulers, Terminal Services
will speed things up for them, too.

Another benefit for sizeable organizations is that the total cost of
licenses is less because the CAL for Pwoject Web Access (the thin
client) is much cheaper than a full Project Professional license, and
only the schedulers need PPro.

In addition, Project Server (including Project Web Access and Windows
SharePoint Services) adds a lot of functionality beyond standalone
Project: You can control which fields of information are available
to various users. You can associate unlimited numbers of Issues,
Risks, and Documents with a project, or a specific task, or each
other. Everyone gets a personalized home page dashboard that
presents important information such as new assignments, issues they
are supposed to work on, overdue timesheets, etc.
You can easily create and present portfolio views of all projects,
or subsets such as projects associated with specific programs,
geographies, owners, customers, strategic initiatives, etc.
Resource managers can analyze the supply and demand for their
people. You can forecast resource demand by skillset or other
resource attributes such as location.
Schedulers can see a resource's availability before assigning him
to a task. Managers can request and compile scheduled status
reports. Executives can do on-demand analysis of work, cost,
availability, earned value across the enterprise, broken down by
time, project type, department, geography, etc.

The list goes on. You should get a Microsoft salesperson, or better
yet a Certified Partner specializing in Project Server, to present a
live demo to your organization; there's nothing like seeing it in
action, and having someone who can answer the many questions you will
have.

To add to this I would say that if you are dealing with "far from LAN
speeds" for the schedulers you will certainly need to employ terminal
services for them. Low speed or high latency networks will not do well
when using Project Pro.