Podcast Playlist
Life After Project Online
Microsoft Project Online is being retired on September 30, 2026. So what comes next?
Life After Project Online is a podcast series exploring where project and portfolio management is headed in an AI-agentic world. Hosted by Dan Lefsky, each episode brings in a guest who's spent years in the trenches of PPM to share what they're seeing, what's changing, and what PMO leaders should be paying attention to next.
Legacy of Project Online
Dan Lefsky, President of Quantum Edge, had the opportunity to sit down with Brian Smith, Microsoft Senior Escalation Engineer, to talk about Microsoft Project and Project Online. Here's what stood out: the best project systems were never just about schedules. They were about context. Brian spent years inside the hardest part of the product - the escalation layer - where jobs got messy, queues broke, and the only question that mattered was how to unblock the customer. That's the lesson: tools only matter if they can hold complexity without losing the plot. Brian's sharpest point on where this goes next: AI can do a lot. But lose context, and it stops being useful fast. The future isn't more automation. It's better guardrails. Better context. Better decisions. That might be the real legacy of Project.
Dan Lefsky sat down with Jeremy Cottino, a 3x Microsoft MVP and longtime voice in the Project Server and Project Online community, to talk about what actually carries forward when a platform sunsets. Here's what stood out: Jeremy spent years in the technical weeds of Project Online. That grounding shaped everything that came next. He took that same discipline into elite sport, running PMO and membership work for UEFA, AS Monaco, and the European Club Association, including leading the project that helped fans return to stadiums during COVID. His point is simple: the tools change, but the habits of a good PMO (structure, data, follow-through) don't. That's what actually survives a platform retirement.