You might be familiar with the term “Death by PowerPoint,” where data is presented in lengthy, unproductive meetings with no actionable outcomes.

Similarly, “Death by Excel” describes a scenario where you dive into using Excel for project management without fully considering your project’s needs. This often results in excessive manual updates and heavy, data-intensive workbooks that require significant resources just to manage the data.

Microsoft Excel has been an indispensable tool since its launch in 1985. Its robust feature set includes data analysis, graphing, and a wide range of formulas that cater to various business needs. Excel’s adaptability has made it a favourite for project management, allowing users to create detailed project plans, track progress, and manage resources all in one place.

Some Critical features making Excel indispensable

1. Flexibility: Excel can be customized for virtually any project management task.
2. Familiarity: Most professionals are trained in its use, reducing the learning curve.
3. Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft Office products.

However, I have observed many professionals jumping to Excel sheets without considering whether Excel aligns with their project data, workflows, tracking and reporting needs.

Consider a Program Management Scenario:

1. Five cross-functional teams.
2. Each team has sequential activities flowing through the work pipeline.
3. Each step produces multiple outputs (files, documents, data).
4. Teams need notifications once the previous team completes their activities.
5. Five main project statuses, each with 2-3 sub-statuses that need tracking.
6. Over 20 projects are delivered weekly.

It was surprising to see Excel even being considered for tracking this. I preferred and implemented JIRA as a solution for the following reasons:

1. Task Management: Easy task creation( even from Outlook mails), assignment, and tracking.
2. Project Views: Offers multiple project views (list, board, timeline) to suit different  team and management level project health and status reporting
3. Collaboration: Enhanced collaboration features, including comments, file attachments, and team messaging.
4. Work Queues : I automated task assignment to individual team queues and inter-team work flow based on the status and substates of the tasks
5. Automation: Automates repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more critical work.
6. Reporting and Analytics: JIRA provides insightful reports and dashboards that visualize project progress, identify bottlenecks, and measure team performance.
7. Integrations: JIRA integrates with wide variety of tools including Realtime export to Excel using JQL or pre-defined Filters, streamlining workflows and centralizing project information

Using JIRA, I am able to track 50+ projects in a daily stand-up meeting within 30 minutes.

What are Your Thoughts?

If you had to implement and manage this kind of program, what tool would you choose among the plethora of project, task, and workflow management tools available? Share your experiences and recommendations!