The Back Loaded contour allocates less time to the beginning of the task and more to the end, with the amount of time rising over the course of the task. Contours, like splits, cater to real life. Contours allow the project planner to design such patterns quickly, without a lot of fiddling with numbers. Project management can be intimidating, especially to someone new to this kind of responsibility, so Microsoft has attempted to improve Project 98's approachability with several tutorials. While You Work provides a number of specific lessons that guide users while they are working on actual projects.
All tutorial assistance is at a basic level, clearly designed for first-time project managers.
In keeping with today's emphasis on the Web, Project 98 includes Personal Web Server and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01 to enable HTML publishing. Personal Web Server allows an individual PC to provide HTTP and FTP services, so the pages created by Project 98 can be viewed by others, perhaps over a corporate intranet. On our tests, it was a simple matter to save various aspects of a project to HTML pages, which we could then view with our Web browser. There are literally scores of other improvements and additions to Project 98. But it is ease of use and approachability that will endear this new version to users.