You will soon be able to try out Microsoft Project and Visio for free without getting IT approval

In a move that is sure to irritate IT admins, Microsoft announced that next year, customers and individuals without global or billing admin rights can sign up for Microsoft Project or Microsoft Visio 30-day trials before directly purchasing subscriptions or engaging their IT procurement team.

Once available, users’ existing business logins can be used to sign up or request licenses for the following trials on their established tenants managed by their organization.

Admins can prevent the chaos by using the same self-service purchase controls to disable self-service trials while making use of subscription management capabilities to oversee and manage trial licenses on the License page in the Billing section of Microsoft 365 admin center. If admins disabled the self-service purchase functionality for Project and Visio in the past, self-service trials sign up for individuals or departments automatically will allow users to request licenses directly from you.

These trial capabilities are available worldwide except for India and will become available from the 22nd of January 2022.  They are not available for Education or Government customers.

Admins can read more about how to control the process at Microsoft here.