Microsoft Project (MS Project) is a project management tool from Microsoft used to prepare project schedule, tracking project status and present customized reports to stakeholders. MS Project is a leading project management software used by project managers across industries.

Often people get confused between MS Project and Excel due to its appearance however these two tools are entirely different. Excel is a general purpose tools used for various purpose whereas MS Project is very specific tool for managing projects. People feel they can learn and use MS Project like Excel and other office tools however MS Project implements project management principles, concepts and calculations and therefore much more complex to use than other office products. Like a complex machine requires proper training for it usage to get required output, MS Project also requires proper training for its effective usages to get required output. Without MS Project Training, one can make several mistakes and use bad practices that will make the life of project manager miserable with little productive outcome. The MS Project Training will make the person to use best practices, use the MS Project effectively and save precious time to spend on managing projects and team. To use Microsoft Project, training is a must.

Yes, it does make sense. One can do all planning, tracking and reporting using MS Project Professional without project server. Project server will actually make collaboration among team and stakeholders easy. The main strength of Project Server is not planning or tracking but collaboration. MS Project server is multifold costlier than MS Project Professional. You can plan and track projects but collaboration like sharing project plan, collecting actual status, updated actual data in the schedule, sharing MOM, sharing documents, managing risk & issues etc. manually in the absence of project server.