Dropping Open Workbench: Back to Microsoft Project
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm going back to Microsoft Project. I've worked for several weeks to get Open Workbench working the way I like. But there are two very important issues that I couldn't get to work in OW.
The first was I had to double-click each task and assign dependencies and resources through the dialog box. I hated that. In MS Project, all you do is type the name of the resource to assign it. To set a predecessor, you type in the number of the task. As for as I know, I couldn't do that in OW and it was the most frustrating thing about it.
Second, it is just not as user friendly as I would expect from a software program. I really tried to learn it and make it useful for me, but in the end I wasted a lot of time and effort working to make the projects work the way I liked. I guess you do get what you pay for... sometimes.
Honestly, I have to give Microsoft credit for their good usability and ease-of-use principles in their software. While a lot of people disdain them for various things (including myself), some things they do extremely well.
On a side note. I've never seen Microsoft as an INNOVATOR in technology. They've always been the COPY CATS with a good marketing plan. They copied Windows from Apple, copied Java with C#, began copying the iPhone with there phone (whatever the name was), copied Adobe Flex with Silverlight (??). Anyway, if there is one company that has a damn good marketing team, its Microsoft. If there is a company that has damn good innovations, it certainly isn't them.
In my opinion... Of course...
Hi Chris, I couldn't agree with you more. In fact I recently wrote an article called "I hate Open Workbench" for our company's website and was trolling the net for like-minded project managers when I found your post. Using OW is a very painful and frustrating experience. This time Microsoft do have a really strong product in MS Project. What has really worried me is that, over time, some big companies have adopted OW as their standard project scheduling tool. That's crazy and it just shows how poor corporate judgement and procurement policies can be when clearly no professional project manager would ever elect to go with OW. Keep up the campaign, we need to rid industry of this sub-standard, clunky tool that is Open Workbench. (ps: not paid by Microsoft!)
