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Mr. Angiulo said
that a firm release data for SP1 will be
announced in three weeks but SP1 could be as
late as March 2008.
One reason for the
late release of SP1 conveyed by Mr. Angiulo was
"we (Microsoft) wanted to release it with Office
SP1, due in the March/April timeframe."
Never can we
remember a Microsoft Project or Project Server
service patch released along with Office service
patches. As a customer I would be pretty
irritated about this excuse. If Microsoft has
fixed something like core functional problems
and thoroughly tested the fix, then not
releasing the service patch to the entire user
base isn’t being customer focused - an attitude
typically associated with market dominance and
we have only ourselves to blame for that.
Frankly, we were
disappointed in that response from Mr. Angiulo,
and with all the little tips throughout the
conference from Microsoft folks on ways to deal
with functional and technical problems. Like the
following tip for opening a project that is
“stuck in check-out” when you have already saved
it, closed it, and checked the project in. Here
is the tip: “Open the project in read only,
close it, and then try to open it again.” We got
lots of those little snippets of wisdom during
the conference and some we have tested without
the expected results.
As for the success
of the Microsoft Project Technical Conference,
it failed to gain much momentum, provided little
value, cost too much and finally fizzled out on
Wednesday afternoon with people walking around
asking, “Is this it?” It is our strong opinion
that the conference tended to parallel most EPM
deployments when they have not been planned
well, not driven from the top-down, and without
with a strong performance management system in
place.
Clearly, the EPM product
group is not
being managed well and the result is:
-
An EPM 2007
system with far too many problems that are
not being publically addressed, and
-
The most
lack-luster industry conference we have ever
attended.
Maybe this post from
the product group blog says it all, they are
simply “closed for the season” but still taking
license fees. See:
http://blogs.msdn.com/project/
 Next year, we think
they should consider holding the conference in a
location that could support the technical
requirements of their guests…maybe a city that
can at least provide internet service at the
conference site, a little more coffee and a few
more chairs and tables… maybe in a city like
Mountain View next to Google.
By the way, as the
Project blog states, they are “hard at work
designing the next version of Project Server”
and Mr. Ballmer did provide a demo. Stupid us,
we thought they would be working hard to address
all of the EPM 2007 issues, problems, and bugs.
PCWorld review of the conference
PCWorld review of new features in coming
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