For years, we managed timelines in MS Project — or, more accurately, around it. Only project managers had licenses. So we exported PDFs. We recreated Gantt views in Excel. We spent hours on workarounds that became part of the job. Timelines weren't living tools; they were static snapshots, disconnected from the people doing the work. No one could engage with them, let alone be accountable to them.
And that was normal.
A while back, I learned Microsoft had improved functionality between Project Web and Planner — the latter already included in our enterprise license. If it worked, we could stop duplicating timelines into decks and spreadsheets. I flagged it. Filed it away. And moved on, because at the time, the update hadn't been rolled out to our system yet.
Then last week, something broke. My MS Project files stopped syncing to SharePoint. In the rabbit hole of trying to fix it, I stumbled across something I didn't expect: that same functionality I'd written off months ago… was now available.
I didn't wait for the organization to roll out a new process or SOP. I started testing it.
The fix wasn't flashy. But it reminded me of something I forget in large systems: the ecosystem does evolve. Not all at once. Not always with fanfare. But often quietly, and just enough to offer a new path forward — if I'm paying attention.
It made me wonder what else I've assumed is still broken, when really, it's just overdue for a second look.
What outdated workarounds are we still maintaining — long after the system has shifted?