Johanna Rothman writes about teaching PMs about scheduling and whether she should teach Microsoft Project as well.
My answer was that Project should be taught as one of the many tools available.
Why? Well for one thing, a PM might not find themselves in a Windows only environment--why teach only a tool that won't be available? Maybe they'll be using FastTrack, or the tool of choice might be one of the open source packages available.
The other thing is that Project just gets in the way. I've dealt with MPP files that charted projects that ran well over a year, and involved multiple groups of engineers, UI specialists, business architects, marcomm, and everything else in-between. Project breaks down badly the more non-linear and the more groups of tasks to be tracked are created. It has memory leaks, and doesn't like to work with any non-Microsoft product. Oh yeah, the fix is *not* to go Microsoft only. The fix is to get the package to work.
Okay, end rant....
But why make the student have to suffer with a package that would just get in the way of the learning process. I'd rather have a student come up with a method that works for them than learn how to do things only one way. That way they understand the whys of the process, and not just the how.
When you're teaching concepts, it should be as tool-independent as possible.
Posted by lsefton at February 1, 2004 09:04 PMThanks for posting this
Posted by: Tiffany at April 11, 2004 06:11 PM