Few Ways in which Excel can give you trouble in Project Management

Excel is one of the fantastic tools that can be used for various business processes. Most of the projects depend on Excel to manage their deliverables. Many project managers who go through pmp training are well-versed with the benefits of using Excel for project management needs. While Excel is an instrument to run a project, it will be a bad idea for businesses to completely over-rely on it. There are a few issues with this software that may cause trouble in project management.

So, if you are using Excel project management, you have got to take a look at this article.

It is nous that Excel is an enthralling tool for projects involving financial data. For many entrepreneurs and businesses, it’s like the second-best invention after Pizza.

Yes, Excel can do wonderful things. But you know even Iron man can be killed.

Then why do most of them are using still? It is because:

• Adding tasks and recognizing individual tasks is easy
• Most of them are pretty familiar with it
• It allows to create charts and graphs
• There is a plethora of project management templates to download

You may assume everything seems fine and what’s the issue? Actually, there is nothing wrong with it, provided you are very happy with your team’s communication, collaboration, and productivity.

But you seldom see such teams, don’t you?

Here are a few issues that Excel may trouble you in project management.

1. It creates a communication gap

Each member in the project should keep communication intact to clarify doubts, share files, provide feedback, inform, update, and so on. Unfortunately, this can’t happen through Excel. You’ll have to use other tools like Slack, Skype, etc. Using multiple tools to stay on track can lead to confusion and havoc. Members in the project repeat the questions that have been answered, or worse, they can skip some updates leading to blunders.

2. People tend to forget tasks enlisted in Excel

In a project, there will be many tasks that involve multiple people to work on sub-tasks. Remember, just because you assigned a task doesn’t mean they will update in their Excel sheet to meet the deadline.

So, it is a common tendency that people forget what is not reminded often. So, the onus is on you a week later to get it done. Anything that it isn’t listed on Excel slips through the rift, which can create confusion and even delays.

3. Templates in Excel are hard to personalize

Though there are a plethora of Excel templates of Project Management, it is hard to find the template that best fits for your team. Project managers require long hours to personalize templates for their team. Furthermore, unless you are a wizard in Excel, you need a professional who can elegantly personalize the template for you.

4. Sometimes, Excel software crashes continuously

If there is a team of people working together and all of them open the same spreadsheet at once, it will crash. As Excel isn’t really a Project management software, it keeps crashing continuously. This can cause problems, because when it happens, your crucial time of working goes in vain and also you have to ask every team member if the recovered data is up to date.

5. Project templates of Excel aren’t designed to update individual To-Do lists

Most of you know that Excel Project management templates are conceptualized for team projects. Unfortunately, you can only create abysmal to-do lists for the individual members in the team. The Excel project management will allocate the tasks for everyone in the team to complete. Howbeit, each of them will have numerous subtasks under the main task. Thus, they have to create their own to-do-lists to accomplish them.

6. It is difficult to view Excel in Mobiles

The Excel project management is definitely not designed for the mobile and it is hard to access the data. Although you can log in and check the sheet, it will be too small to visualize and hence, you have to keep zooming, scrolling, and squinting to check each detail of your tasks in the project management. Also, it is painstakingly hard to edit files, in case you want to edit something. It seems like it is easier to take printouts for reference than using them in mobiles.

7. Excel doesn’t suit for Agile Project Management

We all know that agile project management is considered best for adapting to project requirements. There won’t be any huge changes in each step of the project. However, unanticipated aspects can come in and create havoc by destroying huge plans of the project. In this case, agile teams are expected to change plans quickly to get rid of these accidental events. If you are using Excel project management, it is supremely hard to change the plan.

8. Dashboards in Excel Project Management are poor

A software should easily allow project managers and senior team leads to view or scrutinize big picture of project progression through the dashboard. But examining it in Excel is really awful.

Even if there are some templates which allow project dashboards, they are reserved for visualization like charts, which are rarely used in Agile project management.

You can create own Excel dashboards, for which you should have exquisite skills and time to formulate yourself.

9. You can’t personalize access rights in Excel Project Management

Who do you want to give the Excel project management access to? There are two options.

Firstly, everyone can be allowed to access, but it becomes unconquerably difficult to track who made what changes in the file, unless you have an additional software Office 365.

Additionally, do you really wish to provide every employee with authority of viewing projects and tasks that only the managers and leads should have access to? This will create a big data security issue.

On the other hand, you can give access to only a project manager who can view or edit. Then it will increase the burden of project managers to update each and everything happening in the project.

Read More news:

Tech giants slam UK proposal to eavesdrop on encrypted chats

Uber to weed out low-rated riders for bad behaviour