What the field has taught us.

Without links between tasks, a delay does not propagate. The schedule keeps showing achievable dates when they no longer are. Links are what keep it honest.

A successful migration starts well before the data transfer. It starts with an inventory: what exists, what is still used, and what you leave behind.

When timesheets take 14 seconds to open, teams end up not filling them in. The problem is often solved in a day, as long as you search methodically.

Each project manager sees a reasonable workload. Added up, those workloads exceed the person's capacity. As long as nobody does the sum, the overload stays invisible.

Having every progress report approved exhausts the project manager and slows the team down. Sorting reports by buffer means only the ones that threaten the objective need a decision.

An up-to-date schedule tells you where you stand. It does not tell you what has changed. By naming a version of the plan and comparing against it, you see at a glance what has slipped, and by how much.

A schedule can look right on screen and contain errors that distort every date. The most frequent ones are easy to spot, as long as you know where to look.

Since September 30, 2026, Project Online is no longer available. Your schedules, however, often still exist as .mpp files. Here is how to read them, sort them and decide what comes next.

Spreadsheets have real strengths: everyone knows how to use them and they adapt to anything. Leaving them does not mean throwing everything away, but keeping those strengths and adding what is missing.

Asking "where are you, in percent?" produces flattering, late figures. Asking for the time spent and the work remaining reveals drift as soon as it appears.

A workload plan in percentages is reassuring, but it hides overloads. Counting in hours, person by person and week by week, shows where to make trade-offs, and by how much.