Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is an application that helps the project managers to establish dependencies among tasks, create conditions, find solutions to resource conflicts, and also help in reviewing various factors such as cost and schedule performance during the project duration. As such MS Project is more a Plan to simplify schedules.

MS Project can help to −

Visualize the plans of a project in the standard and defined formats.
Plan tasks and means reliably and efficiently.
Track statistics about the duration, work, and resource requirements for the project in consideration.
Generate reports about the project and to share the progress in the meetings among the other team members.

Initially, Microsoft Project came out as a DOS-based application. The Project software was developed in Microsoft 'C' along with an assembly language and was targeted towards the PC framework. Conceived by Mr Bredehoeft, Alan M. Boyd introduced the application as a tool within Microsoft to help their developers for managing large projects. It was Boyd who wrote the specification and with the help of a local Seattle company developed the model for what today is Microsoft Project.

Versions of Project

Dos Versions

Project 1.0 in 1984
Project 2.0 in 1985
Project 3.0 in 1986

Other Versions

Project 1.0 for Windows in 1990
Project 4.0 for Mac in 1993
Microsoft Project 95 in 1995 (first 32-bit version)
Microsoft Project 98 in 1998 (Last version to run on the Windows NT Framework)
Microsoft Project 2000 (last version that supported Windows 95)
Microsoft Project 2002 – First to contain product activation, last to support Windows NT 4.0, 98 (SE) and ME.
Microsoft Project 2003 - First to have Windows XP-style icons and the last to support Windows 2000.

Years of Release

1992 (v3.0)
1993 (v4.0)
1995(v4.1a)
1998(v9.0)
2000(v10.0)
2003(v11.0)
2007(v12.0)
2010(v14.0)
2013(v15.0)