Introduction to the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Planning Guide
This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14
In this article:
How to use this planning guide
What is Office Project Server 2007?
How to use this planning guide
The content in this planning guide is designed to lead a team through the steps of planning and deploying a new solution based on Office Project Server 2007. The audiences for this guide are business application specialists, line-of-business specialists, IT generalists, program managers, and infrastructure specialists who are planning a solution based on Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. Before using this guide, you should:
Review the Product evaluation for Office Project Server 2007 to learn about the features of Office Project Server 2007. This will help ensure that Office Project Server 2007 meets your functional and IT needs and will help you envision and plan your solution.
Define the organizational goals that you want to achieve with a solution based on Office Project Server 2007.
Define the vision and scope of the solution.
This planning guide has been organized in two stages. The first stage guides you in determining the types of projects and sites that your organization needs, the features, and the interactions between the projects and sites that meet your enterprise goals. Out of this stage of planning, you develop a set of worksheets to determine the details of your site and feature needs. These worksheets help you record information such as:
Projects and project characteristics
Project scenario identification
Project scenario checklists
Sites and site hierarchies
Relationships between sites
Features of sites
Site customizations
Along with filling in the worksheets that accompany this guide, you should incorporate your planning decisions about your project, sites, and features into a conceptual design document that:
Defines the purpose of the solution you are planning.
Describes the implementation of the solution.
Provides data, flowcharts, illustrations, and other information needed to plan the solution deployment.
After you have determined how your solution will work, the second planning stage guides you in making a series of deployment planning decisions. In this stage, you complete a set of worksheets to determine the implementation of your deployment. These worksheets help you record information such as:
Deployment design
Physical topologies
Database design
Security design
Service-level agreements
Along with filling in the worksheets that accompany this guide, you should incorporate your deployment planning into a design specification document that:
Defines hardware requirements
Describes the physical system design
Provides data, diagrams, and other information useful to the team implementing the deployment
After you plan your sites and features and plan the deployment, the [LINK to deployment guide] guides you in implementing your Office Project Server 2007 deployment.
This guide includes a companion set of worksheets for recording information related to your planning or deployment activities. To best achieve your solution planning and deployment goals, use the supplied worksheets to record the results of your planning decisions as you use this guide. For a complete list of worksheets, see Planning worksheets for Office Project Server 2007.
Note
For a description of the steps needed to plan the migration and deployment of an existing solution to Office Project Server 2007, see Deployment for Office Project Server 2007.
What is Office Project Server 2007?
The Microsoft Office Project 2007 family of products provides a range of software tools that support a variety of approaches to work management, levels of process maturity, and business goals. On one end of the spectrum, Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007 provides enhanced desktop tools for small teams or individual contributors tasked with managing projects, but who are not necessarily project managers. These users or companies are not positioned to build a competency in Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM), or simply lack business justification for it, yet they still need tools for managing work. The projects they manage are not complex, and the most efficient approach is to use ad hoc scheduling and tracking processes. In this case, Office Project Standard 2007 provides simple, intuitive tools that enable operational control with minimal overhead.
At the other end of the spectrum, Office Project Server 2007 provides a user or company the tools to build an EPM competency that integrates software and technologies with their people, processes, and organizational policies and governance. When these elements are developed and aligned with business objectives, they enable capabilities for managing work, time, resources, and budget. This form of project management is critical for executives who want operational efficiency and standardization for scorecard rollups. Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 provides the visibility, insight, and control to help bridge the strategic and operational worlds, while leveraging existing software systems.
Office Project Server 2007 addresses the needs of sophisticated project management organizations that require centralized and strategic financial control in addition to rigorous project management methodologies. Office Project Server 2007 delivers key performance enhancements for large organizations that manage complex programs and portfolios with a globally distributed workforce.
For a full Office Project Server 2007 product and feature overview, see Product evaluation for Office Project Server 2007.
Download this book
This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:
See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for Project Server 2007.