Microsoft Project is one hell of a program. Database, graphical front end, financial calculator, file sharing. Its complexity is on the order of CAD, schematic, and PWB layout tools. They try to make it look friendly, but don't kid yourself. This is a pretty good site to help you use it.
Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something.
The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
Sir John Harvey-Jones
Some useful links for Project Managers.
This site has hundreds of articles on all the subjects involving technical management of projects.
ITS Project System Engineering
This is different than Defense Department System Engineering. An example of a method using different terms and work breakdowns.
A softer side of project management, with articles and definitions.
The Home of the Project Management Institute. Even if you don't join, you may want to use its resources for standardization of your plans and projects.
A few years ago, I translated the PMBok methods into MS Project, and found a few things. I am sure they have fixed them by now.
PMBoK Methods in MS Project Format
By the way, transposition an excellent design check. By translating a design into another format, errors or improvement possibilities become evident that were not visible in the original format.
A graphical idea planner. A little quirky, but handy to plot out relationships in a hierarchical system.
What Happened to Microsoft Project?
MS Project is still out there, but a lot of new products have sprung up that are probably better for what you are specifically doing.
One thing I learned about project management software is that it has to guess - a lot. When you change something, it has lots of dependencies, some of which are constrained, some undefined. The program ends up making a ton of decisions you are unaware of. Microsoft Project is a bad guesser, so you will see some unusual results if you let it do the thinking.
When I used the Mac back in the mid 90s, there was a program, Plan & Track, that guessed pretty well. No tasks that are suddenly 300 years, or 40 exceptions to click through, that sort of thing. This experience clued me in on how much of this goes on.
It is important to know that when you grab a graphical item and change it, all sorts of numbers go flying.
Free, open source project planner that is compatible with MS Project files and data structure. It is limited in its formatting and other features, but in general will work pretty well for most users. There is an enterprise version that has most of the other features necessary to use in a multiproject environment.
Basecamp is an integrated, Project Management tool for delverables, actions, documents - functionality is similar to Sharepoint.
Fogbugz is a fairly traditional bug tracking tool, except that is features Evidenced Based Scheduling. It is very modern method for projecting completion dates by using historical start and end dates to generate simulations and probabilities.
How Evidence Based Scheduling works:
When a task is assigned, the engineer provides an estimate for the task, which is captured.
When the task is completed, the actual time to complete the work is logged.
A model of the engineers ability to estimate work effort is developed based on the inputs provided. This consists of accuracy, distribution, and offset.
This model is used to predict the engineers ability to estimate and execute a task per his estimate. So if an engineer is found to typically come in one week short of their original estimate, with a deviation of +/-50%, the program will use this as a model for this individual. It then can combine this model with models of others on the project, to create interactive simulations of the outcome. Results come out something like "the project has an 85% chance of finishing by May 31, and a 95% chance of finishing by June 30".
For this to work, you need many, small, similar tasks, and no environmental changes, so it is mainly applicable to coding changes in larger efforts. But an interesting concept