Pocket PMOMigrating from Project Online: what retired, and an honest look at what comes next
Microsoft retired Project Online on 30 September 2026. This guide sets out what that means for PMO governance, what the designated successor does and does not cover, and the three migration paths in front of you — including where a dedicated forecasting layer fits.
What retired on 30 September 2026
Project Online was Microsoft’s cloud portfolio and project management service. Microsoft retired it on 30 September 2026, and the planning, resourcing, portfolio, and reporting capabilities it hosted are no longer available. Microsoft published retirement guidance naming Planner as the path forward and documenting export routes for existing data. The retirement is not a rumour and not a marketing event: if your portfolio reporting depended on Project Online, those capabilities ended on that date, and every option below starts from that fact.
What the designated successor does and does not cover
Microsoft’s designated successor is the newer Planner. For task execution it is a reasonable home: plans, tasks, assignments, and basic schedule views sit where your teams already work. For PMO governance the gap is material and worth stating plainly. Planner has no financial tracking or budgets. It carries a single baseline where Project Online offered eleven. And its portfolio oversight is thinner than what Project Online provided for cross-project resourcing, portfolio selection, and reporting. None of this makes Planner a bad product. It makes it a task-management successor, not a governance successor — and PMOs that try to run governance directly in it usually end up rebuilding the missing pieces in spreadsheets.
Path 1: stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, with Planner and manual governance
The lowest-friction option: let execution move to Planner and rebuild governance by hand — budgets in spreadsheets, baselines captured as snapshots, portfolio roll-ups assembled each reporting cycle. It works, many PMOs will choose it, and it keeps licensing and identity simple. The cost is recurring labour: every governance number is re-derived by copy-paste, every roll-up can drift from the plans it summarises, and whoever does the assembly becomes a single point of failure. If you take this path, standardise the spreadsheets before the first reporting cycle, because retrofitting structure onto a folder of personal workbooks is harder than starting with one.
Path 2: move to another Microsoft-stack portfolio tool
Microsoft’s partner ecosystem includes portfolio and PPM tools that integrate with the Microsoft stack and cover part of what Project Online did: financials, resourcing, portfolio reporting. For organisations with procurement requirements, existing vendor relationships, or programmes that need deep resource management, this is a legitimate path worth evaluating on its merits. Score it against your actual governance requirements rather than feature counts: if the questions are budgets, baselines, and portfolio visibility, score exactly those. Expect enterprise pricing and an implementation programme; that is the trade for the depth.
Path 3: keep task execution where it is, add a dedicated forecasting layer
The third option separates the two jobs Project Online bundled together. Task execution stays in whatever tool your teams use — Planner, Jira, Asana, Smartsheet, or files — and a forecasting layer sits above it. Pocket PMO is that kind of layer, and we will be specific about what it is: a forecasting and governance workspace, not a task-management replacement. Teams enter three-point estimates, budgets, and risks, or load the schedule itself from a Microsoft Project (.xml) or Primavera P6 (.xer) export so the forecast starts from the plan that already exists; the app computes PERT expected durations, 10,000-iteration Monte Carlo delivery probabilities for any named date, the CPM critical path, EVM position, and risk scoring — per project and rolled up across the portfolio. Nothing about your execution tooling has to change, so the migration stops being a replatforming programme and becomes an addition you can trial on one project in an afternoon.
Capability map: what Project Online did, and what covers it now
The table maps the capabilities PMOs actually used in Project Online to what covers them after retirement, and — where the claim is true — to the Pocket PMO equivalent. Where Pocket PMO has no equivalent we say so rather than stretch the mapping.
| Project Online capability | After retirement | Pocket PMO equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Budgets and cost tracking | No native equivalent in Planner; typically rebuilt in spreadsheets | Project budgets with EVM cost tracking on the same project data |
| Baselines | One baseline in Planner, where Project Online carried eleven | No schedule-baseline store: Pocket PMO is a forecasting layer, not a baseline archive — keep baselining in your schedule tool |
| Earned value reporting | Not provided; manual calculation in spreadsheets | EVM workspace computing standard earned value metrics from budget and progress inputs |
| Portfolio dashboard | Per-plan views plus built-in cross-project roadmap views; no governance dashboard, so roll-ups of delivery probability, risk, and EVM position are assembled by hand | Portfolio roll-ups of delivery probability, risk, and EVM position |
| Schedule forecasting (PERT, Monte Carlo) | Not provided | Core capability: three-point PERT sizing, 10,000-iteration Monte Carlo with P50/P80 confidence levels, CPM critical path and float |
| Task execution | Planner’s strength | Not replaced by design: execution stays in your existing tool; Pocket PMO holds the planning and forecasting layer above it |
How to decide
Three questions usually settle it. First, who assembles governance reporting today, and what does that assembly cost per cycle? Second, do your steering decisions actually depend on budgets and earned value, or only on dates? If the honest answer is dates only, Planner plus a lightweight roll-up may genuinely be enough. Third, how much migration programme can you absorb this year? Path 1 costs ongoing labour instead of a programme. Path 2 is a programme. Path 3 is an addition you can trial on a single project before committing anything. Whichever you pick, decide before the first quarterly report is due from the new estate, because that report is where improvised governance usually becomes permanent.
Frequently asked questions
What replaced Project Online?
Microsoft’s designated successor is the newer Planner. It covers task execution — plans, tasks, assignments, and basic scheduling — but it does not carry Project Online’s financial tracking, its eleven baselines, or the depth of portfolio oversight. Governance capabilities have to come from somewhere else: spreadsheets, a Microsoft-stack portfolio tool, or a dedicated forecasting layer above your execution tool.
Is Planner enough for a PMO?
For task delivery, often yes. For PMO governance, usually not on its own: there are no budgets or cost tracking, only a single baseline, and portfolio reporting across many plans is thin. If your steering committee only asks whether work is on track task by task, Planner can carry it. The moment reporting needs budgets, earned value, or cross-project risk and probability, plan for a governance layer beside it.
What happens to my Project Online data?
After 30 September 2026, Project Online projects and their data are no longer accessible through the service. Microsoft’s documented export routes applied to data saved while the service was live: a previously saved export still holds your records — schedules, tasks, and resourcing history — but anything that was not exported before retirement cannot be pulled out of the retired service now. What any export gives you is records, not governance: budgets, baselines, and earned value reporting have to be re-established in whatever you choose next. If you did not export before the retirement date and need to discuss recovery options, contact your Microsoft account team, and check Microsoft’s official retirement guidance for the current specifics rather than relying on third-party summaries.
How do I keep earned value reporting after the retirement?
EVM needs three inputs that have to live somewhere: a budget, a progress record, and a schedule. Spreadsheets can carry it if the discipline holds, but hand-maintained EVM calculations drift easily. Pocket PMO computes earned value metrics from the budget and progress data entered on each project, so EVM reporting continues without a Project Online subscription — and it rolls up across projects for portfolio reporting.
Run the example on your own schedule
Trial the forecasting layer free in Pocket PMO: PERT, Monte Carlo, CPM and EVM on one real project, with the maths shown.