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Microsoft Project vs Smartsheet
March 09, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
25★
Microsoft Project is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft which is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. The application creates critical path schedules, and critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons are also available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart.
28★
Smartsheet is an online project management and crowdsourcing tool. It allows owners of information to comprehensively involve contributors through authenticated access, publicly-accessible published sheets, or via embeddable survey forms. Functionality is focused on the ability to organize, share, and update tasks and files.
Microsoft Project and Smartsheet are, at first glance, suspiciously similar in the way that all project management tools tend to be. Both allow you to create Gantt charts, assign tasks, generate reports and collaborate with colleagues who, let’s face it, will probably ignore the deadlines anyway. They exist to make sense of chaos, though whether they succeed depends largely on the people using them. You can access them online, share your work and marvel at how modern technology has made it easier than ever to manage projects that still somehow go off the rails.
Microsoft Project, being a Microsoft creation from the distant past of 1984, is the sort of tool you’d expect a serious, no-nonsense project manager to wield like an ancient spellbook of resource allocation. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, which is both a blessing and a curse, as it requires deep commitment to the Microsoft ecosystem. It is also, in true Microsoft fashion, incredibly powerful but not exactly intuitive, like trying to program a VCR while being chased by a deadline. Large enterprises love it, mainly because they can afford the licenses and the consultants needed to understand it.
Smartsheet, on the other hand, is the younger, more agile contender from 2005, designed to be friendly, flexible, and—dare one say it—fun. It looks and feels like an overachieving Excel sheet that went to business school and decided to automate everything. While Microsoft Project is for those who enjoy wrestling with complex dependencies, Smartsheet is for teams that want to click things, drag things and let the software worry about the details. Its pricing is subscription-based, making it accessible to businesses that don’t have infinite IT budgets and it embraces automation in a way that suggests it may one day achieve sentience and start organizing your personal life, whether you like it or not.
See also: Top 10 Project Management software
Microsoft Project, being a Microsoft creation from the distant past of 1984, is the sort of tool you’d expect a serious, no-nonsense project manager to wield like an ancient spellbook of resource allocation. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, which is both a blessing and a curse, as it requires deep commitment to the Microsoft ecosystem. It is also, in true Microsoft fashion, incredibly powerful but not exactly intuitive, like trying to program a VCR while being chased by a deadline. Large enterprises love it, mainly because they can afford the licenses and the consultants needed to understand it.
Smartsheet, on the other hand, is the younger, more agile contender from 2005, designed to be friendly, flexible, and—dare one say it—fun. It looks and feels like an overachieving Excel sheet that went to business school and decided to automate everything. While Microsoft Project is for those who enjoy wrestling with complex dependencies, Smartsheet is for teams that want to click things, drag things and let the software worry about the details. Its pricing is subscription-based, making it accessible to businesses that don’t have infinite IT budgets and it embraces automation in a way that suggests it may one day achieve sentience and start organizing your personal life, whether you like it or not.
See also: Top 10 Project Management software
