The Hidden Costs of Delaying Your Project Online Migration

Microsoft has officially announced the retirement of Project Online on September 30, 2026, and while that date may feel far away, the real deadlines for many organizations will come much sooner. PMOs that postpone their migration often underestimate the operational, financial, and strategic costs of waiting — until they’ve already absorbed them.

In this post, we’ll break down the hidden risks and expenses of staying on Project Online too long, and why now is the best time to plan your move to a modern platform like OnePlan or Planner Premium.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

Legacy systems often require overhauls before they’re migration-ready. Project Online environments tend to accumulate:

  • Outdated projects
  • Deprecated custom fields and workflows
  • Legacy templates
  • Misaligned calendars

As you prepare to migrate, you may realize that not all data should be migrated, and perhaps there are elements of your environment that are no longer used. This means you should budget time for areas like:

  • An audit of your environment to identify the scope of projects, resources, data to be migrated
  • Gather your process documents – this may be a good opportunity for process improvement. Do some analysis!
  • Identify your migration team and SMEs – you’ll need help – this will be a team effort. Who are the players?

Integration Breakage & Reporting Gaps

Most organizations have built critical reporting and integrations on top of Project Online, including:

  • Power BI dashboards
  • Resource and financial reporting
  • Custom workflows
  • APIs and data feeds
  • Third-party connectors

As you prepare to migrate, take this opportunity to identify which of these reports are still needed, because fixing them late in the migration cycle results in rushed rebuilds and higher implementation costs.

Out with the Old – In with the New!

Modern tools are accelerating rapidly. Planner Premium and OnePlan now offer:

  • AI-powered planning
  • Enhanced portfolio and resource planning
  • Modern team collaboration inside Teams
  • Better reporting and dashboards
  • Improved work visibility across the organization
  • Integration with other platforms like Jira, ADO, etc.  – so the teams you have working in those tools can continue to do so, while giving your executives portfolio-level access to that data via OnePlan.

 Early Migrators For the Win

Delaying your Project Online migration may feel like the easier choice today — but it’s the costliest one long term.

A proactive migration gives you:

  • Time to clean your data
  • Time to pilot new processes
  • Better access to experts
  • Lower overall cost
  • Higher user adoption
  • Less operational disruption
  • A chance to breathe!

If you’re unsure where to start, we’ve created a set of free resources to help: