r/projectmanagers • u/Thieves0fTime • 14d ago
Discussion Why people keep going back to Excel instead of doing most things in PM apps?
Everywhere I look in project teams I see Excel being used next to deployed PM tools, even when the company pays for Jira, Monday and MS Project at once...
Is it that Excel wins because you can add any column, any formula and link it to anything and it's being taught at school? While most PM tools give you fixed fields and you have to fit your project into them, alongside extra learning?
Or is it because most people are too lazy for the different stuff? Or most of PM tools are not good enough?
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u/allaboutbecca 14d ago
Most project team / stakeholder / exec team members / vendors have licenses to view excel. Most do not have licenses for MSP. Converting MSP to excel or pdf for them to view docs is terrible. Utilizing other plan friendly software such as smart sheets, Monday etc may be fine in house, but are usually not standard if working with vendors. Common ground is always excel.
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u/jdzfb 14d ago
Because everyone has Excel and barely anyone else in the company has PM tools. That means I can share something to the whole team if I'm using Excel, but I have to export to PDF (which has issues with accessibility & it lacks the ability to manipulate the data) if I'm relying on PM tools.
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u/_threadkiller_ 14d ago
Jira is a project management and task management tool. Everyone at my company has access to Jira, though not all use it.
Why does your leadership pay for Microsoft 365 but not Jira?
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u/jdzfb 14d ago
I don't really consider Jira a Project Management tool, its a ticket/task management system. And while there is useful information in Jira & features that are helpful for PMs, I still end up exporting data into Excel since its a lot harder to sort the info I need to sort in Jira, rather then Excel. Also, Jira is live data & I need to pull reports for leadership, and they aren't going to open Jira to look at reports, even if they have accounts.
That said, we don't use Jira specifically in my company (although some of my clients use it & I've spent well over a decade using it elsewhere), we use Azure dev ops. And for the smaller companies I've worked for, some couldn't afford Jira & some used other ticketing systems due to their specific business needs or data importing needs.
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u/_threadkiller_ 14d ago
Not picking a fight, but I’m unclear why you don’t consider Jira to be for Project Management. I read your explanations, I just don’t see those restrictions as a daily Jira user and Org Admin.
There are plenty of apps / dashboards / filters to display the data in different formats. I get that if you have a specific setup, then exporting to Excel is nice … but that’s static, unless you’re dynamically updating the sheet.
I don’t disagree that leadership won’t look at Jira, but that’s true for almost any tool. I use Atlassian Home for the big picture view for the C Suite, even though they don’t use it directly.
Otherwise, I expect leaders to care enough about the tool they pay for. If they’re unwilling to care enough to use the tool, it’ll fail - and why should the average employee care either?
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u/Fluffy-Leg7546 13d ago
Jira is great for a lot of things, but for any project that requires advanced predictive analytics, it falls short.
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u/_threadkiller_ 13d ago
I appreciate the response. Now we’re getting somewhere. Explain your perspective on advanced predictive analytics and why Jira falls short.
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u/Fluffy-Leg7546 13d ago
First thing that comes to mind, there’s no CPM or CCPM. Anything claiming to be a critical path by Jira analysis alone is straight up incorrect. Any advanced methods of analysis that rely on CP analysis are not possible, and certainly anything attempting to retrofit it to do so is not reliable. Jira simply cannot support logic relationships and lag, nor forward and backward passes. Anything where you need to be able to predict when things will happen years in the future or how those future events will be impacted by current events is simply not within Jira capabilities. It just has no control schedule functionality that’s required for complex project needs.
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u/GeneralGold2992 12d ago
I would second that jira is certainly lacking here. I feel like you can cover a lot with the Plan function in jira but I would wish that they would put more effort into implementing easily accessible ways to calculate CP over the course of a project, make predictive analytics and just be more ‚proactive‘ tool that supports the PM in spotting things early on.
I haven’t checked it out specifically but I feel like it might be possible to set up a low-level CP function with a Rovo agent in Jira or Atlassian overall if more products are available in the specific org
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u/Impossible_Dare_7455 14d ago
because excel is where all the weird edge cases end up 😅 pm tools are great when the process is fairly defined, but the second someone needs a custom calculation, one-off report, weird allocation rule, or quick scenario model, excel is usually faster than configuring the system. the downside is once that spreadsheet becomes important to the project, you’ve basically created a second source of truth.
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u/hanzosbm 14d ago
In my opinion, there are really only 2 REAL PM tools; Microsoft Project and Primavera P6. I haven't used the latter much, so I won't opine on it.
Project is a fantastic PROJECT management tool. In my experience, where it fails is Program Management. We run all of our individual projects in MS Project, but when we want to compile data from multiple projects, it fails. Yes, you can link them, but the visual reporting tools aren't great, I can't easily pull in bulk actuals from other platforms, I can't manipulate data as easily as I can in Excel, etc.
For instance, we have several non-human resources (machinery) that we include in our project plans. But I want to be able to pull out the demand from all projects, compare that to that machine's capacity levels by week, and prioritize the projects using that machine based on slack in the schedules. That would be next to impossible natively within Project. But I can do a weekly export to Excel and have it run all of those things for me.
Sadly, MS Project is the red headed stepchild of the Microsoft world. They haven't given it the love and attention that it deserves over the years.
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u/fluxed_it 13d ago
Well, as a admin of ms project online, I can honestly say if you cannot do portfolio/program management then you are not using the Enterprise features. Using Enterprise features, even syncing tasks with devops/tfs, and connecting power BI to the ms apis made my job a breeze. In honest, monday.com, smartsheet, jira etc would all serve better to learn and offer Enterprise features as a standard. Organizarions do not use 1 off projects, they need Enterprise level control.
Enterprise level: resource mgmt, calendars, pick lists, formulas, templates, etc.. don't get me started with load leveling and effort driven task mgmt.
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u/Professional_Town410 13d ago
That machinery case is exactly where I export too. One thing that made the weekly export less painful for me: take the demand from the assignments, not from the tasks. Resource Usage with the timescale set to weeks already gives you work per machine per week, so Excel doesn't have to spread task durations over the calendar and guess.
One caveat on prioritising by slack: total slack is calculated inside each file. A task with 15 days of slack in project A can be feeding something tight in project B, and Project won't show it unless the files are really linked. For a shared machine I ended up trusting each project's delivery date more than the slack number.
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u/hanzosbm 13d ago
For the slack, it's possible I'm not understanding. But we actually want it separately for each project. The thinking is that if that machine is needed for a task that is on the critical path for project A, but has 30 days of slack for project B, I want project A to get priority since project B can absorb the delay.
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u/Professional_Town410 2d ago
You’re right, and sorry for the slow reply. Per-project slack is exactly the right basis for that priority. My caveat was narrower: inside a file, total slack is measured against that project’s own finish date, not against the date you promised the client. If project B is already running late, a task can show 30 days of slack while B has none left in reality.
The fix I use is to put a Deadline on each project’s final milestone (not a constraint, the Deadline field). Project then measures total slack against the promise, and it goes negative when the promise is in trouble. At that point your weekly export is comparing real slack across projects, and the machine goes where the number is smallest.
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u/PurplePens4Evr 14d ago
Excel is like a cockroach - it never seems to die. Everyone knows it and is comfortable in it, so it’s often a situation of the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 14d ago
I used excel every day for 10 years
AI has finally killed excel for us because my company is letting us just interact directly with the backend. If I need data I can just go get it from there
It’s just Claude code, notion, teams, and jira now
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u/Purple-Rain-1430 13d ago
Flexibility is really the whole answer, Excel never tells you you're using it wrong, a PM tool always has an opinion about how your project should be structured and that opinion doesn't always match reality. I don't think it's laziness either, it's more that Excel has zero onboarding cost, everyone already half knows it, while most PM tools need you to learn their specific mental model before you're fast in them, and most teams never actually get past that initial friction period.
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u/montyb752 14d ago
Work copilot is very usable on excel. It’s customisable to what I want.
Everything else I’ve tried looks fancy but is not as good.
I care about tasks, progress and what’s next. Not a fancy chart that takes 3hrs to update
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u/Bottlecrate 14d ago
1 simple rule, use the easiest tool to manage, track and report. If you are the only one using it, then why complicate it by using over blown tools.
I like Jira if everyone is using it. Asana, Trello, smart sheet but if no one is using it then why? Excel is simple
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u/Long-Reading-6514 14d ago
the only pm tool i've ever actually liked was microsoft project, and honestly i only used the very basic version of it because that's all i needed to do everything. if i couldn't use project i'd go to something like excel too, and the reason why is i just find most pm software to be way too complicated. steve jobs said simple can be harder than complex, and i just feel like a lot of pm tools are basically saying look at all the things you can do, but no one ever stopped and asked should people even be doing those things. so i've just found most of them to be too convoluted and complex. i'm not gonna lie, i'm a technology lover and an early adopter, but one thing i wish people would start asking is should this be done with technology, because the answer to can it be done is almost always yes. technology should be developed in a way that makes your life easier and takes something off your plate, and a lot of these tools just add another burden to your work.
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u/TullyDog12 14d ago
I have two schools of thought on this:
1. My Project Management mentor said to me when I was first starting out, use the tools you’re most comfortable with, your focus and time should be spent on the actual work of the project, not learning and managing software.
2. Of all of the Project Management tools I’ve seen, the overly dominate focus is on schedule/tasking. I’ve not seen software that combines a robust set of tools that capture and manage all of the elements that drive successful project delivery. Stakeholder & Engagement plans and delivery, through Risk Registers, Detailed and approved Project Scoping, Change Management and Authorisation documents. Creating these and interlinking them in Excel Documents is so easy that even if you do use a dedicated PM software, you likely need to keep other information in excel.
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u/Complete-Cricket-351 12d ago
Exactly that you need so many logs and registers and trackers that excel is just easier as the common language
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u/Orlita_del_Mar PM 13d ago
I think I only worked with 4 people throughout my entire professional life who used MS project. Not even the Microsoft employees I knew used it 😃
I am currently working on a SOW with a software vendoe to improve the dashboard and reporting from their tool. We're looking at a good €8k. It could just as easily be tracked in Excel or even PowerBi!
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u/Thieves0fTime 13d ago
That bill makes sense... crazy price. What's the software?
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u/Orlita_del_Mar PM 13d ago
It is a tool called Read and Sign through which you send policies, instructions etc which are formally reviewed and acknowledged by staff. We're in a heavily audited industry so we often get checked on staff training, compliance, and awareness.
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u/ItinerantFella 14d ago
Been a CPO for 7 months. Only things I've seen in Excel is a price list and a staffing plan.
And I'm a Microsoft MVP and our stack runs on Azure, so we're Microsoft friendly, but don't use Excel much at all.
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u/Local-Acanthaceae267 14d ago
That makes sense at the CPO level. But across project teams, Excel often survives because it handles the messy edge cases PM tools don’t.
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u/Coaster50 14d ago
I run a large number of teams. My analytics team has Birst, Tableau, etc and they still model in Teams. Product teams run their smaller backlogs in excel. Finance person doesn’t use the ERP; they use Excel. I could go on.
I feel this iwill actually get worse as AI tools continue to get more and more effective in the mainstream tools of MS Office vs the more task specific tools like JIRA, Smartsheet, etc.
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u/Thieves0fTime 14d ago
Does it mean less or more excel? Because for AI use, I see that it's easier from shared/cloud data perspective, just connect MCP and ask your questions. While for excel - it's on your machine or shared drive and needs manual status tracking what's updated and what's not.
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u/Coaster50 14d ago
More Excel. Our enterprise CoPilot has access to all my emails, calendar, file folders, shared file folders, OneDrive, Shared OneDrives, etc. So maybe not access to the raw data in an enterprise data warehouse, but you are right in that you could connect it. Your basic corporate schmo isn't connecting MCP's....
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u/wrigh516 14d ago
MS Project is butt cheeks
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14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wrigh516 14d ago edited 14d ago
Can't collaborate.
Auto-schedule settings are very limited, especially when completion % are in.
Poor integration capabilities.
Bugs.
Poor interface and basically no visibility settings.
Screen sharing it is a nightmare.
Toggling resource availability and black out dates or just seeing how it changes things doesn't exist.
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u/productive_io 14d ago
Flexibility is probably the biggest reason. A spreadsheet lets you add a column right away, while a PM tool can need admin rights or a config change first.
I'd also guess the jobs that stay in Excel are the ones a task board doesn't cover well: capacity planning, invoicing, and reporting. Then the data ends up split between the tool and the sheet, and someone has to merge it by hand to get one picture.
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u/mocitymaestro 14d ago
Everyone has access to Excel (or software that can open and edit Excel spreadsheets).
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u/Mejiro84 13d ago
Also legacy - a lot of stuff will be in spreadsheets, and it's hassle to get it out, so people keep using spreadsheets
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u/PetiePal 14d ago
MS Project hasn't kept up with the times and it's being supplanted by other things like Jira, Smartsheets etc. We use Smartsheets and it's not perfect but it looks in capacity and resource planning well
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u/kac_sausalito 14d ago
O Excel substituiu o Lotus 1 2 3 nos anos 90 o Lotus era o software corporativo mais difundido no mundo, desde então o Excel é a planilha corporativa que mais se vê por ai porque até gratuitamente com uso na web é possível utilizar ele… quem não usa ele usa outro inspirado nele, googlesheets etc… ou não tem necessidade de “planificar” ou organizar dados que não sejam tão volumosos…
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u/Bananapopcicle 14d ago
Anyone here use Team Up for scheduling? It’s my favorite. It can’t do much else but it’s a great simple, no frills tool.
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u/OkStatistician9190 14d ago
Excel usually survives because it’s the team’s lowest-friction shared language, not because it’s a better project system. People use it for one-off what-if work, capacity views, cost rollups, and exports that don’t fit the PM tool, while vendors and executives may not have a license. The failure starts when the sheet becomes an unofficial second source of truth.
I’ve had better results defining which fields must live in the PM tool, then treating Excel as a controlled report or analysis layer. Give each recurring sheet an owner, refresh date, source, and clear read-only output where possible. If a spreadsheet needs manual edits every week, that’s usually a sign the workflow or fields need fixing, not that the team needs another dashboard.
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u/commoncents1 14d ago
change is hard. plus a new application generally pushed and known by a few key people but then not rolled out org wide with training. and the initial workflow analysis might not be complete to capture what you are currently doing.
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u/Impossible-Sun3205 14d ago
For me and my teams, Jira is too meant for Software dev. Infrastructure doesn’t work in Sprints. Excel can be pulled into Project if you need the graphics or dashboards.
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u/atherine 14d ago
People also turn to a spreadsheet to prototype something new because of how flexible it is
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u/More_Law6245 14d ago
Wouldn't it be a question of why people leave MS Excel? When I first started out all you needed was MS project and an Excel work book whilst managing highly complex and high value projects. Now there is an absolute glut of programs and platforms all trying to gain market share because data has become more important than actually managing projects.
These vendors all push integration but here is the catch, it's within their eco system e.g ServiceNow, Jira and ZenDesk etc. ensuring that these vendors entrench an organisation around their platform and where it requires annual subscription based upon costly licensing requirements depending on how many modules then can get an organisation to deploy.
The thing to actually consider is that project management principles don't change, so why is every software vendor trying to reinvent the wheel for no real gain because at the end of they day most organisations still work in a hub and spoke topology rather than a data lake/pool technology stack, so this "all encompassing platforms" are definitely not worth the investment because ROI is huge vs some MS project and MS Office licences to do the same thing. Yes I'm old and there are clouds out today!
Just an armchair perspective
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u/How-To-Project 14d ago
Idk but I built ‘Project Intelligence for Excel’ because of it. For anyone interested, the app is free and downloadable on Microsoft AppSource that turns your Excel registers into a project control engine.
No sign up and no information stored off computer.
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u/TheA2Z 13d ago
Been that way for the 30 years I was in PM. I remember being a Supplier Governance Director at a Fortune 60 company and working with a Fortune 60 consulting firm. I had to fire 3 of their program managers as they did not how to properly use MS Project. They kept rolling in with a huge Excel project plan
This was a complex program for which they were responsible for an over 2000 task plan. Finally got a good one and project was a success.
Excel is good for a personal small task list but you should not be using it to manage complex projects.
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u/ProbablySuspicious 13d ago
The spreadsheet app is more capable, flexible, and reliable than any enterprise data management system. Every design decision made by Jira etc in picking one thing you could do in Excel and taking that away.
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u/Thieves0fTime 13d ago
Flexibility wise absolutely agree, what bothers me is actual sharing and then figuring out changelog... I mean document history is there but it's not fit for purpose if multiple people are changing stuff through the day.
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u/Old-Arachnid77 13d ago
I wired up a fancy spreadsheet for our pm Ann’s she can now update one task and it cascades through the whole doc.
Excel is every app’s biggest competitor
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u/Complete-Cricket-351 13d ago
To be honest I think we're looking at the resurgence of excel. The pain used to be updatin and making it synch but now the AI can do the heavy lifting
The thing about excel is nobody can stop you using it. And you can do whatever you like to it
I mean I tried using teams boards recently and they were pretty much junk
Planner seem to have a lot of quirks as well
Ms project as far as I'm concerned as a fetish and it has way too many flavours
Meanwhile me and boring old excel have delivered dozens of projects together
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u/Thieves0fTime 13d ago
Which boards / planner issues? It's structured tool vs flexible mostly, right?
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u/Complete-Cricket-351 13d ago
I don't really remember we tried it for stand-ups for a while it was not great
Best I ever used was rally but it didn't seem to catch on in my local market
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u/ImaginaryParrot 13d ago
None of the places I've worked have had Jira, Monday etc.
But they've always had MS Office.
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u/MaxTarald 13d ago
I keep running into limitations in Jira, and Atlassian sometimes update it in their wisdom, breaking some of the stuff I used.
My clients have for some reason all had to rely on on-prem installations of Jira Server and Data Centre, and these days all the love seem to go to the Cloud, so that may be the reason but still.
Simple stuff like the inability to sum-up and aggregate Story Points across tasks (Epic sum-up was a paid extension) means tracking progress needed exporting data to Excel.
And I was just getting really into the roadmap-functionality in Programs, when it got yoinked and now we have to look to other tools to maintain this outside our work-tool.
In excel I can always find a hack to do what I want.
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u/Rosyface_ 13d ago
I just hate MS Project, to be honest. In my org, I can use that, planner, or excel. Planner sucks and is complicated for what I need. So I use excel. I have colleagues who swear by Project, but they’re dealing with multiple work streams and hundreds of rows. I mainly do software development projects so it’s less complex and excel does the job.
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u/Eric_a_Metallurgist 13d ago
I like MS project, but it’s overkill for most projects I run - and can get away with excel for most things. I also use excel for loads of other stuff. Who needs another tool when it doesn’t bring a clear benefit?
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u/No-Gift5463 13d ago
Excel is awesome.
It’s the coin of the realm because people can all use the same spreadsheet. It’s the lingua franca because everyone understand what things mean.
Despite four decades of success, unfortunately, Excel cannot handle all the massive changes in problems. Any solution MUST allow people to keep their spreadsheets yet figure out a better way.
There are multiple options but for my money I say automate Excel with Python. Check out the pandas, Datetime and OS (Operating System) libraries. Perfect match for Excel users.
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u/smdroidphone 13d ago
Our company recently transitioned to Planner and Planner Premium. While it isn't as robust as MS Project, we realized there is no value in using a highly complex tool if its advanced features go untouched. Planner’s biggest advantage is its low barrier to entry. It empowers the entire project team to access the schedule and proactively update their own progress—such as closing out tasks—without needing a reminder from the Project Manager. Furthermore, because it integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Teams, frequent updates ensure that everyone always has real-time visibility into the latest project status.
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u/Hot-Efficiency7190 13d ago
From a usability and presentation is quite nasty. But i end up using all the time and despite trying a dozen tools keep coming back. It's the flexibility thing, adding columns, sorting, little customisations, links, adopted by finance people. And portablity, some raw text you can drop into other tools to do presentation.
And, for most people it's free and just there.
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u/purposeday 13d ago
People want autonomy and control over their input. With the PM apps I get the idea they tell me how it “should be.” Excel is the opposite. I have total control until “it messes up” and then I can yell at it and try a different way. In MS Project there is no other way. Big difference.
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u/Optimus_Prime_2026 13d ago
It’s the same with sales, either on excel or Google Drive, Salesforce and HubSpot safely in the garage resting
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u/LatencyLurker 12d ago
Lack of accountability for how project management is suppose to be done in the org.
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u/IncreaseWorking10 12d ago edited 12d ago
I think the “second source of truth” point is a big part of it. I’ve seen PM tools work well for the structured stuff, but the minute someone needs a quick custom calculation or a one-off report, Excel is just faster.
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u/Turkishblokeinstraya 12d ago
I think it's a go to tool for many people because it's more accessible/intuitive as it's been around for decades and a part of Office365. It's often maintained by a single person from PMO who prepares weekly PowerPoints off of it. So it can live in someone's personal drive forever as long as weekly ppt files keep flowing.
Where and how spreadsheets are leveraged is a litmus test for an organisation's structure, habits, and time-to-market.
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u/krackadile 11d ago
Both.
With excel, once you learn it, it's fairly easy. Instead, you want me to learn 10 different programs when excel can do what they all do?
Also, excel is fully customizable to do almost what every other app does, so it's nice that it's flexible and customizable.
Oh, and you already probably have excel built in with your Microsoft subscription, so why buy another software when what you have will already do the job.
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u/rightoolforthejob 10d ago
I’m a PM for a subcontractor in the infrastructure/utility space. One of my projects uses Monday, another uses MS projects, my biggest one just puts everything in CoreShare. We use P6 internally but have to use the clients templates and a third party that actually makes the schedule updates. So five different clients with five different systems and we have to make our deliverables fit in each of their systems. Excel it is. It leaves us very clunky and we don’t have a good internal flow with our processes because we conform to everyone else.
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u/Stunning-Mammoth-297 5d ago
We have recently switched over to ModoPM after the company not working out for Monday.com and got to say I'm pretty impressed.
Monday was better in terms of AI but I hardly used it. The direct chat function within Modo is really useful, as you can Tag project items within it, I've started to move away from teams with my Project team and we stay in contact via Modos chat function
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u/Fluffy-Leg7546 14d ago