Streamlining project management is the constant goal of every business. With many vast and unwieldy projects going at once, a business can end up with costly delays simply because it is so difficult to keep all the pieces in order.

There are numerous methods recommended to ease this trouble, but perhaps the best is simply buying one of the more recent editions of Microsoft Project.

With Microsoft Project, you instantly have a number of useful tools that can help you organize your projects and keep them going with maximum efficiency.

When you are ready to purchase Project, you should go to SoftwareKeep.com for the best prices. However, if you want to learn more about the program first, read further.

Microsoft Project Capabilities

Microsoft Project is capable of taking all the data from your projects and returning it to you in an understandable way.

Whether it's budgeting, wages, supplies, or timelines, Project is capable of helping you keep it all straight. This means that your business will be running that much more efficiently.

You’ll receive built-in templates that allow you to visualize what is happening in your project in dynamic ways, while the scheduling tool allows you to plan out the entire project from start to finish.

With Project, you can see the tasks ahead of time and assign the resources (workers, equipment, materials, etc.) necessary to get the job done even before it has started.

Microsoft Project Editions

All editions since 2010 are still quite popular and remain active. However, they obviously improve and gain features with each new edition. To settle on the best edition for you and your company, check out these overviews.

Microsoft Project 2010

This version of Project is still in use after almost a decade, and with good reason. The features are excellent.

With 2010, you are able to build out easily-understood timelines from start to finish, including building hypothetical projects. These hypothetical scenarios can be used in several ways.

For instance, you can drag and drop resources to see how different scenarios will play out. You can also make different tasks active or inactive to see how that will affect your schedule, resources, and budget.

These projects don’t have to be hypothetical, though. You can also create a project with placeholder information when all the details aren’t yet clear about the upcoming project.

In addition to this, you can use the task inspector to find out where there are conflicts in the project and easily fix them. This will save you time dealing with these kinds of mistakes later.

Finally, with Sharepoint synchronization, you can publish a project as a task list and share it so that you get regular feedback from team members.

Overall, Project 2010 is an excellent program for basic project planning needs, although there are far more features to be found in the later editions, like Project 2013.

Microsoft Project 2013

This version begins with Microsoft’s increasing interest in improving communication options. With 2013, you can use Lync Integration to IM others in your business in order to get more immediate answers to your questions.

You can also share Project timelines and schedules in online meetings or elsewhere with the increased use of the SkyDrive and Sharepoint.

This is aided by the increased usage of cloud storage. With Project Online also available, you can take your work anywhere and continue to be constantly connected to your team.

2013 doesn’t stop with just communication, however. You also have the incredibly useful Reports feature, which gives you new ways to visualize your projects. The report options include:

• Burndown: See everything planned, completed, and left to do as lines on a graph to better comprehend where you are in the project.
• Cost Overview: See everything related to your budget, including planned costs, remaining costs, actual costs, cumulative costs, baseline costs, and percentage of project completion. This way you can know if you’re meeting your budget goals.
• Project Overview: See how much of your project is complete, which milestones you are approaching, and which tasks have fallen behind your deadlines.
• Upcoming tasks: See what has been completed this week, what is coming due and how far along it is, and what tasks begin next week. An excellent zoom into your immediate priorities.
• Work Overview: See everything about your top-level tasks so you can know how far along you are and what still needs to be done.

Finally, Trace Track Path gives you the ability to highlight a task path so that you can see the entire history of that task, as well as what is upcoming on that path.

As you can see, Project 2013 makes several crucial additions to the Project 2010 edition.

If you want to get deeper into the data of your projects and to communicate more efficiently with your project teams, 2013 is a vast improvement in 2010 and an excellent overall choice. However, 2016 still has much to offer.

Microsoft Project 2016

This edition once again improves communication and data management. One of the best new features is the resource engagement feature, which allows you to request a resource. Once that resource is approved, lock it in for your upcoming tasks.

Building on this, there is also a resource manager that allows for the approval or the reaction of resource applications, all while laying out the capacity available for resources. Beyond this, 2016 offers you the ability to work with multiple timelines at the same time, while also allowing you more customization with date ranges.

The new data analysis doesn’t end there either. With the new heat map feature, you can see more directly how all your resources are being used. All of this comes with the added benefits of the Office 2016 updates, including the Tell Me function. This speeds up your search for tools and features.

If you are looking for the best of everything from Microsoft Project with all the communication, data analysis, and features available, then Project 2016 is the edition for you.

Purchase Microsoft Project From SoftwareKeep

No matter which edition of Project you settle on, you should purchase it from SoftwareKeep.com, where we guarantee the lowest prices anywhere on the web for all of your software needs.

We also have experts ready to assist you in choosing the right software and installing it properly so you have it up and running as soon as you’ve hit the download button.

If you’re looking for a software company you can trust for its integrity and honest business practices, look no further than SoftwareKeep. We are a Microsoft Certified Partner and a BBB Accredited Business that cares about bringing our customers a reliable, satisfying experience on the software products they need. We will be with you before, during, and after all the sales.