5 reasons against project management with Excel - or: Why a fax machine doesn't belong in the home office!
We think dinosaurs are cool! But please not in the company and certainly not in critical areas that jeopardize the success of our customers. In project management, Excel is one of those dinosaurs that we grew to love in computer science lessons, but which can no longer meet our ambitions and growing requirements.
Dangerous nostalgia: project planning with Excel
Excel is undoubtedly an all-rounder; after all, it saved us countless “quick and easy” lists during our school days and first jobs. And yes, many companies still swear by Excel for their project planning today. But can serious project management really work with Excel? Or are we being held captive by nostalgia?
Here are five reasons why Excel as a tool for project planning in your company is like a fax machine in your home office and how you can only really get started with smarter solutions like Jira.
1. excel loves data, but projects are messy
With a project plan for Excel, tasks can be wonderfully packed into tables and remain there for everyone to see – until something changes. Because no project is linear.
An example: A colleague moves a date and suddenly all the dependencies are no longer correct. Welcome to the Excel labyrinth! Projects need flexibility, and that is simply not Excel’s specialty.
Changes, new tasks or priorities quickly turn your Excel file into an abstract Picasso of bright colors, incomprehensible comments and cryptic abbreviations.
Learn how to efficiently pursue Kanban, Scrum and hybrid approaches with Jira:
2. "Project planning with Excel template" sounds tempting, but is limited
Google is full of “ingenious” templates for project planning with Excel. But as soon as you start using these templates, you quickly realize: The supposedly tailor-made suit somehow comes from the C&A off the rack. Does it fit? Maybe it does. Does it fit perfectly? Probably not.
Every company has individual requirements. Templates are often difficult to customize and this also requires experts who at least know their way around the Excel formula cosmos. It’s better not to waste time tinkering and instead use tools that have made it their business to adapt to your company.
This is how Polygran supports you in introducing and setting up Jira:
3. excel is a team player - at least in theory
“Projektplan_final_v3_Überarbeitet_NEU.xlsx”,
“Projektplan_ganz_gneu_v3.5_intern.xlsx.”, “Projektplan_jetzt_aberklich_ganz_fertig_und_final_hoffentlich.xlsx”
The classic: The Excel is in circulation and after just one week, 7.5 versions from 5 employees are circulating – chaos is inevitable. Experience shows that even a shared document does not help, because something is always not saved or overlooked.
Collaboration suffers massively here because Excel is only designed for real teamwork to a limited extent. Comments and changes end up in different files, and at some point nobody knows which version is actually still up to date. Resignation sets in and many hours of paid work are spent just trying to find the right version in the depths of the cloud or on the local hard disk.
Sounds like a typical Monday for you – regardless of the actual day of the week?
Then take a look at our solution for real collaboration and good communication:
"With innovative functions, countless apps and individual customizations, Jira brings light into the darkness and supports you in the continuous optimization of your processes."
4. errors are pre-programmed - literally
Have you ever tried to move an image in Word by one pixel or indent a paragraph? No, of course not! The risk of upsetting the document, the computer and the Eurasian plate tectonics is too great.
Excel behaves in a similar way, but is somewhat more opaque, as errors or dependencies are hidden “between the cells”: a wrong formula, a slipped date, one row copied too many – and there we have the project data salad. This can have fatal consequences for your project planning with Excel. A single typing error can quickly lead to missed deadlines or wrong decisions.
Shared documents further increase this risk. At the end of the day, it was the usual suspicious employee: Mr. Nobody! Now at the latest, even for your formula luminary with an honorary doctorate in Excel, it becomes a Sisyphean task to restore the “ingenious” project planning template for Excel “Projektplan_jetzt_erst_recht_v1,1/3.xlsx” despite the backup (when was it from again and where is it?).
Find out here how you can avoid these horror scenarios thanks to Jira, Confluence and integrated cloud solutions:
5. excel does not provide answers, but raises questions
A modern project management tool should help you to maintain an overview, set priorities and evaluate data in a meaningful way. Excel can store data, but it is not designed to tell the story behind the numbers. How is the project progressing? Who is lagging behind? Which tasks are blocking the rest? With Excel, much of this remains obscured.
With innovative functions, countless apps and individual customizations, Jira brings light into the darkness and supports you in the continuous optimization of your processes. By combining Jira and Confluence as a powerful company wiki, you prevent the formation of silos and create a virtual space for lively exchange and close collaboration.
Learn how to bring teams together and help them to help themselves:
Why not simply modernize?
If you recognize yourself in these points, you are not alone. See it as an opportunity to fundamentally change your approach and leave colorful Picasso tables, version confusion and project chaos behind you.
It’s not about badmouthing Excel. Just like dinosaurs in history, Excel also has its place in the company, just not in project management. Instead, there are advanced tools such as Jira, which have found their way into modern, agile project management in innovation-driven companies around the world thanks to their functions, integrations and extremely fair pricing.
Jira offers:
- Flexibility: Customize workflows and boards to your needs.
- Transparency: everyone can see who is working on what – in real time.
- Collaboration: Comments, updates and progress reports are stored centrally.
- Error-free: Automated processes minimize human error.
Excel has brought us a long way, but projects need tools that move with the times. With Jira, you can take your project planning to a new level – efficient, flexible and, above all, error-free.
Polygran supports you in making the changeover as easy as possible.
Polygran supports you in making the changeover as easy as possible.
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