Microsoft Project Server 2003 can get you where you want to go, but don't understimate the difficulty of the trip.
I had a Mini Cooper back when I was going to college in Minnesota (State Motto: “We’re no worse than some people we could mention.”) This wasn’t one of the modern Mini Coopers that actually goes places, but one of the original Mini Coopers from the 1960s that needed significant engine repair every six or seven blocks. Every aspect of maintenance required parts that were mythical and the manual appeared to have been unsuccessfully translated from Japanese. It had the obligatory Union Jack flag on the roof and was the coolest car I have ever owned. I wish I still owned it, warts and all. When a car is that cool, actually getting it to go places seems relatively unimportant.
What possessed me one summer evening to attempt to drive my Mini from Winona State University to Kellogg, along the scenic Mississippi river, I will never know. I was even “dressed up,” which back in college was quite bizarre. Perhaps I had had some kind of mental breakdown during finals. At any rate, the Mini did inevitably have a breakdown on a particularly desolate stretch of Highway 61, leaving me marooned. After listening to the crickets in the darkness for an hour, I heard a solitary engine sputtering and struggling in the distance. In a moment, two headlights crested a nearby hill and a shabby old pickup truck came weaving along the road in a cloud of blue exhaust. As it approached, I could see two very drunk rednecks in the cab. One drank from a large bottle while the other downshifted with a hay hook. They were laughing and having a good old time as they rolled to a stop. Meanwhile I tried desperately to remember if the movie ‘Deliverance’ was based on a true story.
Since neither was holding a banjo, I accepted their gracious offer of a lift to nearby Kellogg, and climbed into the back of the truck. As my shoes slowly sank into a mound of chicken manure, I held on to the cab for dear life. The truck made a swaying U-turn and sputtered northbound up the southbound side of the highway, gaining speed on the downhill slope. Of course, now that I was traveling the wrong way in a pickup truck full of chicken refuse, Highway 61 suddenly sprang to life with hundreds of oncoming cars. The good old boys in the cab laughed as we slalomed in between oncoming cars, and listened to the panicked horns dwindle in the summer night behind us. Here is the moral of the story. I could have criticized those boys all day long, but we were going to Kellogg. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t sanitary. It wasn’t the route I had imagined, but we were going where I needed to go. Deploying and configuring Microsoft Project Server 2003 feels a lot like my trip to Kellogg.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am a proponent of Project Server 2003 and am writing a training curriculum to support it. However, getting it deployed is much harder and more confusing than you might imagine. It is a very ambitious and complex product. The confusion arises because other Microsoft products are relatively simple to understand and straightforward to deploy. This last statement probably makes you want to hunt me down and do me bodily harm, but it is quite true. Microsoft has, in fact, spoiled us with the relative ease of implementation for most of their products. As I’ve hopefully made clear, Project Server 2003 is a competent product that is clearly heading in the right direction with its Enterprise Project Management systems, but make no mistake—it is going to be a tricky ride. Project Server 2003 is Microsoft’s first significant effort to integrate its software into a vertical solution that scales across the entire enterprise. This means that it is far more complex than we are used to when dealing with Microsoft products. It is no more complex than other vertically integrated enterprise suites, but we don’t usually think of Microsoft in that context.
Deploying a small version of it for testing is not that big a deal, but building it out across an enterprise is. With its level of integration and collaboration, it is more like an ERP system than a traditional project management tool. I think this is an appropriate analogy, but please remember that ERP systems aren’t designed, deployed, and placed into production in a single day. You can start small with Microsoft Project Server 2003 and probably should. But always keep in mind that deploying it successfully across the enterprise is a major project which will require major time and resources. It is, in other words, no different than any other true enterprise solution. We’re just not used to that level of integration and complexity from Microsoft.
My dream in writing my curriculum was to take senior System Administrators and make them self-sufficient masters of Microsoft Project Server 2003, in a single week of training. It is not to be, and if I said otherwise I’d be pulling your leg. Instead, the students will walk away with a thorough understanding of how to organize, manage, and drive a deployment and configuration project. They will also walk a way with a Project Server 2003 deployment imaged in a virtual environment that they can use for evaluation. They will have what they need to evaluate and test Project Server 2003, but they will not be able to quickly plop it into production. You will regret any shortcut you attempt to take. It is still worth the effort to pursue MS Project Server 2003, and I think it will become the marketplace ‘front runner’ in the near future. Just don’t underestimate the effort and training required.
So, to sum it up… you wouldn’t expect to master SAP or PeopleSoft after a 40 hour course. You should measure Project Server 2003 with the same yardstick. A project to successfully deploy and configure MS Project Server 2003 will involve a senior team of technical professionals, and will take some time to complete. You will need expertise in
- Physical infrastructure,
- Storage technology,
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
- Email systems,
- IIS,
- SQL Server 2000,
- WSS,
- Project Professional, and
- Project Management Methodologies.
My course can make you the leader of the team that deploys Microsoft Project Server 2003, able to scope, organize, and manage an implementation project. In all honesty, it won’t give you the ability to install it without a team of competent professionals supporting you. I don’t think any class will, and I don’t think any competent and scalable Enterprise Project Management solution will be any easier or faster to deploy. You will, however, get to your own personal Kellogg.
If you’d like to know more, please contact sales@mindsharp.com