Microsoft Project is not that flexible as many people imagined. It may look great in general. But it turned out to be a huge overhead for a project manager if the project manager wants to use it to tracking *everything*.

I was using Microsoft Project for FDC Credit Card Migration, (code name: Broadway). In the beginning (Oct.2006), I made the project file pretty complete: tasks, dependencies (SF, FS, FF, SS), checkpoints, resource assignment, resource usage percentage, etc. At that moment I was so carefully assigning resource (about 10 engineers) and checked the resource graph, resource usage and gantt chart back and forth to make sure everyone looks flat and no one would be overloaded too much. The .mpp and the schedule looked perfect.

Later, along the course of 2 months development and stabilization cycle, I gave up on it. It was too costly to make sure the .mpp reflect the latest status. Resource assignment change, resource availability change, unforeseen tasks popped up, planned task got cut/shrunk, some tasks got blocked or delayed, etc.

A true believer of Microsoft Project may argue that I was not patient enough, not skillful in using Microsoft Project enough, I was not born to be PM, etc.. May be true.