Microsoft Project vs a Lightweight Project Scheduler: Which Do You Actually Need?
Microsoft Project has been one of the best-known project scheduling tools for decades.
It's powerful. It can handle complex schedules, resources, costs, dependencies and large programmes of work.
But there's another question worth asking:
Do you actually need all of that?
For many project managers, the job they're trying to do is considerably simpler.
They need to create a schedule, understand dependencies, track milestones, see who's working on what and communicate the plan.
If that's you, a lighter-weight project scheduler may be all you need.
Here's how to decide.
What are you actually trying to manage?
Before choosing a tool, forget about features for a moment.
Think about the problem you're trying to solve.
Do you need to manage a complex programme containing thousands of activities, detailed resource costs and multiple interconnected schedules?
Or do you need to answer questions like:
- What needs to happen?
- When will it happen?
- What depends on what?
- Who is responsible?
- What happens if something slips?
- When are the important milestones?
- Are we still on track?
Those are very different requirements.
And they don't necessarily need the same software.
When Microsoft Project makes sense
There are plenty of situations where a powerful scheduling tool is justified.
Microsoft Project can make sense when you're managing very large or complex schedules, particularly where detailed scheduling capability is central to how the organisation operates.
That might include projects where you need sophisticated resource management, detailed cost tracking, extensive schedule analysis or integration with wider Microsoft project and portfolio management processes.
For an experienced planner managing a complex programme, that additional capability can be extremely valuable.
The complexity isn't necessarily a problem.
It's there because the problem being managed is complex.
When a lightweight scheduler may be enough
Now consider a different type of project.
Perhaps you have 50, 100 or even a few hundred tasks.
You need summary tasks and subtasks.
You need dependencies.
You have milestones to hit.
You want to know which activities are driving your delivery date.
You might need to assign people to tasks and check whether somebody has too much work.
And you need something you can update regularly without maintaining a miniature project-management system.
In that situation, the question changes from:
"Which project management platform should we implement?"
to:
"What's the simplest tool that lets me manage this schedule properly?"
That's where a lightweight project scheduler starts to make sense.
1. You don't need another project management platform
Your organisation may already have tools for managing work.
Jira, Azure DevOps, Trello, Monday, spreadsheets and countless other systems may already contain tasks, tickets or work items.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're the best way to understand the overall project schedule.
Sometimes you simply need a planning layer above that work.
A lightweight schedule can provide that without requiring the entire team to move to another platform.
2. You're the person maintaining the schedule
Not every project plan needs to be collaboratively edited by 50 people.
Often one project manager maintains the schedule while the wider team consumes it.
If that's how you work, features designed around large-scale real-time collaboration may add complexity without adding much value.
You may simply need to maintain the plan and then share the information people actually need.
3. You want to get from idea to schedule quickly
Sometimes you just need to build a plan.
You don't want to configure a workspace, create an organisation, invite users, define permissions and work through an onboarding process before adding your first task.
You want to open the tool and start planning.
For smaller projects, or during the early stages of a larger one, that speed can be valuable.
4. Dependencies matter more than task management
A list of tasks isn't necessarily a project schedule.
The important information is often the relationship between them.
If testing slips by a week, does go-live move?
Can development start before design is completely finished?
Which tasks have flexibility and which are driving the completion date?
Dependencies, lag and critical path help answer those questions.
If scheduling is your primary problem, you may not need dozens of additional project-management features surrounding it.
5. You want the plan to remain portable
There's something reassuringly simple about a project being a file.
Save it.
Copy it.
Put it in your project folder.
Send it to somebody.
Archive it when the project finishes.
For some organisations, cloud collaboration is essential.
For others, keeping control of the project file is preferable, particularly when the schedule contains client, commercial or otherwise sensitive information.
Neither approach is inherently better.
It depends on the project.
6. You occasionally receive Microsoft Project files
Even if you don't use Microsoft Project yourself, there's a good chance you'll eventually work with someone who does.
Clients, suppliers and programme teams may send schedules created in Project.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need to adopt Microsoft Project as your own scheduling environment.
If exchanging schedules is an occasional requirement, importing Project data may be enough.
We've covered this in more detail in our guide to importing Microsoft Project XML files.
7. The schedule needs to be used, not admired
The best project schedule isn't necessarily the most sophisticated one.
It's the one people trust.
A technically perfect schedule that's difficult to maintain will quickly become outdated.
And once people stop trusting the dates, the plan loses much of its value.
A simpler schedule that's reviewed and updated every week can be considerably more useful than a complex plan that's always three weeks behind reality.
The goal isn't to use the most powerful project-management software available.
It's to use enough software to manage the project properly.
So which should you choose?
If you're managing highly complex schedules, detailed costs, large resource pools or enterprise programmes, the additional capabilities of Microsoft Project may be exactly what you need.
But if your main requirement is to:
- build a structured project schedule
- create dependencies
- manage milestones
- understand critical path
- assign people to work
- identify resource problems
- track progress
- compare the current plan with a baseline
- communicate the schedule clearly
...then a lightweight scheduler may be enough.
And simpler doesn't have to mean basic.
Where Gantto fits
Gantto was built for that second scenario.
It's a lightweight project scheduler that runs locally in your browser. No account, no cloud, no subscription.
You can create tasks and subtasks, dependencies and milestones while keeping the project as a file you control.
You can start with the free version.
If you're new to project scheduling, our How to Create a Gantt Chart guide explains how to structure a useful plan from scratch.
If you already have a Microsoft Project schedule, read our guide to Importing Microsoft Project XML into Gantto.
And if you're ready to start using Gantto, the Gantto User Guide walks through the features step by step.