If you are PMP certified or on your way to becoming a PMP, then MS Project Professional is for you. I’ve been leading product development initiatives for over a decade and found MS Project Professional to be extremely useful.
As a project manager, I require a tool that can easily map out activities, their dependencies, durations, cost, and time easily. MS Project does this well and if you’re familiar with Word and other MS Office tools, the interface is pretty much the same and located where you would expect them to be.
Project comes standard with an array of templates from SW development to business planning. The interface is very intuitive with process groups and activities listed in outline format on the left. A corresponding Gantt chart is displayed on the right column aligning tasks within its process group measured against time. The standard tools include different Critical Path Methods, determining Early Start, Late Start, Early Finish, Late Finish, Slack, Total Slack(float), activity cost analysis, etc.
A must tool for Project Managers.
I also recommend MS Visio for drafting feasibility studies and baseline use-case documents.