Microsoft Project Online is shutting down – what’s next?
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Microsoft Project Online is shutting down – what’s next?
Attila Bernariusz
Published on 12 February 2026
11 min read
Attila Bernariusz
Published on 12 February 2026
11 min read
Microsoft Project Online will be retired on 30 September 2026. If your teams have been relying on it for project portfolio management (PPM), you need a plan for what comes next.
If you’re currently using Project Online, the news that it's sunsetting in September this year means making a decision about what you’re going to use instead. It's not all bad news. There are great alternatives out there. But before we get to those, it's worth considering what brought you to Project Online in the first place.
Why did you choose Microsoft Project Online?
Here are some of the reasons your organisation probably picked Microsoft Project Online:
- This enterprise-grade PPM system provided comprehensive portfolio, resource, and financial management tools, rather than just basic task tracking.
- Part of the Microsoft ecosystem, it worked perfectly with all your essential tools: Office, SharePoint, Teams, Power BI, and Azure AD. No integration drama required.
- Your PMs were familiar with Microsoft's project scheduling model, meaning less resistance and faster adoption.
- It delivered a standardised approach across your PMO, with templates, governance, and consistent reporting.
- It was in the cloud. You got all the power of Microsoft Project Server without needing on-prem infrastructure.
Why is Microsoft Project Online being retired?
Microsoft said, "Project Online has served organisations well, but its legacy architecture limits innovation and integration that enhance today's collaborative work environments."
In other words, the nature of work is changing. Teams require newer, cloud-native work and project management tools that provide greater scalability, cross-team collaboration, automation, AI functionality, and workflows. And Project Online can't support this.
What to consider when choosing an alternative to Microsoft Project Online
Switching to another system is inevitable, but to help you pick the right product, it's worth understanding how your teams work. And what are the key functions they need moving forward?
Who relies on Microsoft Project Online and how?
In many organisations, Project Online isn't used consistently across the business. IT teams may depend on it for structured delivery plans and dependency-heavy programmes, PMOs for governance and reporting, and marketing teams for running campaign timelines. Knowing whether the usage is confined to a single function or spans multiple teams will influence whether you need a specialist tool or something that accommodates multiple types of work and potentially hybrid ways of working.
What’s the size and structure of the work you’re doing?
Project Online supports large, complex programmes with multiple workstreams, shared resources, and central oversight. But not every organisation uses it that way. Be honest about whether you're coordinating a handful of cross-functional initiatives or managing hundreds of interdependent projects at an enterprise level. Because some tools work great on the team level but struggle with resource availability and capacity utilisation at scale.
How does work get done?
Are teams following a traditional waterfall planning approach, agile methodologies, or a hybrid model where plans evolve frequently? Many organisations now work across multiple methodologies at once. Any replacement needs to offer flexibility to reflect reality on the ground, not just a single rigid approach.
What capabilities will be lost – and which really matter?
For some organisations, detailed scheduling, dependencies, and critical path analysis are non-negotiable. Others rely more on portfolio-level reporting, resource management, or executive dashboards. Understanding which capabilities are genuinely business-critical will help avoid over-engineering the replacement and paying for functionality you don’t need.
Integration versus migration
Integration and migration are not mutually exclusive in this context. Because this is an end‑of‑life announcement, the retirement of Project Online effectively forces a full migration of plans, data, and processes. Once support ends, you risk losing access to the data underpinning your schedules, reports, dashboards, and team activities.
The real question is how that migration fits into your wider ecosystem. You'll need to move your data and usage out of Project Online and into a new platform, and then ensure that platform integrates effectively with the rest of your toolchain – for example, Microsoft 365, Azure DevOps, Jira, or financial systems. In other words, it’s not ‘integration versus migration’, but migration plus integration, so your new solution is both a safe landing zone for your existing data and a well‑connected part of your broader delivery landscape.
What other tools are already being used?
Don't assume you need an entirely new platform. This is a good moment to take stock of your existing tooling and assess where you may already have capabilities that can be extended or scaled – whether that's an agile planning tool, a work management platform, or a portfolio solution.
The end of life for Project Online is also an ideal trigger to tackle toolchain sprawl and shadow IT. By identifying which tools can be consolidated, retired, or more tightly integrated, you can rationalise your toolchain, reduce duplication, optimise budgets, and avoid further fragmenting your delivery landscape.
The benefits of AI in PPM
For all its pros, a lack of AI capabilities is one reason Project Online is reaching end of life. With budgets tightening globally and stakeholders demanding greater efficiency from their cost bases, it's more important than ever that your system has AI built in, rather than bolted on as an afterthought.
AI is increasingly embedded in modern PPM tools, but its impact depends far more on how it's used and integrated than on the presence of "AI features" alone. In practice, AI can assist with portfolio prioritisation, highlight potential delivery risks earlier, support resource planning, and reduce manual reporting effort – but it will not, by itself, fix poor decision‑making or broken governance.
On its own, AI is unlikely to stop organisations from doing lower‑value projects or automatically optimise how people and resources are used. The real value emerges when AI is connected across the end‑to‑end lifecycle – so that context is maintained from idea through to delivery, insights are shared between teams and stages, and learning feeds back into how work is planned and executed. In that model, AI can help leaders make better‑informed choices about which work to start, stop, or continue, and can support improvements in delivery speed, quality, and governance, rather than simply making existing patterns of work slightly cheaper.
What are the alternatives to Microsoft Project Online?
What's right for your organisation will depend on your industry, teams, and unique needs. Here's a brief overview of some potential replacements for Microsoft Project Online, although we can also suggest other alternatives, based on specific organisation needs:
Jira and the wider Atlassian Cloud Platform
Atlassian tools, including Jira and Jira Service Management, work well for software and agile teams managing backlogs, dependencies, and delivery at scale, as well as for business teams (e.g., HR or Finance) which use them for request handling and workflow management. Confluence is widely used across teams for blogging, wikis, and broader knowledge management. Supporting end-to-end value streams and inter-team collaboration between business and IT, Atlassian tools also provide resource availability and capacity planning for distributed teams. Integrated AI features help improve work items at creation and when breaking down larger initiatives into manageable tasks. Furthermore, portfolio-level visibility is possible through tools like Focus and Jira Align or Plans in Jira Cloud, with AI insights from Rovo. Users can also leverage AI agents integrated into workflows and automations to reduce manual, repetitive work.
monday.com
This flexible work management platform is suited to cross-functional teams running a wide range of operational initiatives, from marketing campaigns to talent recruitment to data-driven service delivery. The platform also has a portfolio management solution. Its standout capability, Portfolio Risk insights, powered by AI, automatically analyses project data and generates a daily list of potential risks for each project. monday.com is also heavily investing in its AI capabilities, offering AI agents with new features being added regularly to support time savings.
GitLab
GitLab, powered by the GitLab Duo Agent Platform, provides project and portfolio management for software-led organisations. It unifies strategy, planning, and delivery into a single DevSecOps platform. AI agents within GitLab Duo help plan, prioritise, and report on work. Combined with epics, roadmaps, and value stream analytics, GitLab enables modern portfolio management for agile, product-centric organisations.
What comes next?
One thing’s for certain, Microsoft Project Online is scheduled for a full shutdown by 30 September 2026, which means there isn't much time left to identify and implement its replacement. Acting early is vital. Whether you opt for a lift-and-shift, or a more in-depth transformation, a successful migration goes beyond moving data. It requires optimising cloud benefits, integrating existing tools, and—crucially—preparing the people who use them.
Adaptavist is a strategic solution partner of best-of-breed technologies, including Atlassian, monday.com, and GitLab, and an expert in cloud migration and transformation. We take a holistic, tool-agnostic approach, helping you select the right solutions for your unique needs while considering the impact of change on your processes and people. From selection and migration to training, user acceptance testing, and adoption, we support your teams every step of the way, keeping disruption to a minimum. While tools and processes make change possible, it's the people who make it happen.
Get in touch with our experts today and start making the move from Microsoft Project Online.
Written by
Senior Strategic Advisor