From WhatsApp and Excel to one dashboard: how to digitise project management
Project Management
From WhatsApp and Excel to one dashboard: how to digitise project management
“Where are we with this task?”
“Can you send me the latest Excel file?”
“Someone shared the site photo in the LINE group, but I can’t find it now.”
“The numbers in this file don’t match the version you sent yesterday.”
If you work on projects, you’ve probably heard all of these. They come up constantly in construction, where project owners, contractors, subcontractors, engineers, architects, procurement and field teams all have to coordinate.
LINE, WhatsApp, Slack and Excel are everyday tools for many project teams. Most people already know how to use them, and they cost little or nothing to get started.
As projects grow and more people get involved, though, these habits start to cause problems. Information ends up spread across chats and files, and updates come in at different times. Project managers can find themselves spending more time chasing information than managing the project.
The problems with running projects on LINE, WhatsApp, Slack and Excel
There’s nothing wrong with these tools. They still work well for daily communication and specific tasks. The trouble starts when they become the main way a project is managed, especially when there’s a lot of information, many stakeholders and work that needs constant tracking.
1. Information is scattered across channels
Picture a construction project where contractors share site photos in LINE, engineers send reports over WhatsApp or Slack, procurement updates material status in Excel, and the project manager keeps a separate Excel file to summarise overall progress.
Drawings and documents might sit in Google Drive or on individual laptops, and urgent tasks get passed along in private chats.
With project information in so many places, a simple question like “Where does the project stand right now?” can mean checking with several people. Worse, team members may be looking at different versions of the same information, which leads to mismatches and mistakes.
2. Multiple Excel files lead to inconsistent numbers
Excel is very good for managing and analysing data. But on a large project where several people update information, keeping track of file versions gets hard.
For example:
Project Plan.xlsx
Progress Update.xlsx
Latest Budget.xlsx
Progress Final.xlsx
Progress Final V2.xlsx
Before a meeting, the project manager may have to work out which file is current and which figures to use. The underlying problem is a workflow with no single source that everyone works from. Excel is just where it shows up.
3. Tracking progress means asking for updates
Another common pattern is tracking work by asking around:
“Is this task finished?”
“Have the materials arrived?”
“Why is this task still open?”
That’s manageable with a handful of tasks. With hundreds or thousands of activities, asking one by one eats up time and leaves the project manager waiting on replies from individual people.
From chasing updates to seeing the whole project on a dashboard
On larger projects, project management can’t just be assigning tasks and waiting for people to report back.
Teams need to see the state of the project from the same set of information. The more tasks, contractors and stakeholders there are, the longer it takes to track work through individual questions or by merging files, and the more likely something important gets missed.
A project dashboard is one way to deal with this. It pulls the main project information together in a format that’s easy to read, so project managers and teams can check status and spot issues in one place instead of opening several systems or contacting several teams.
Depending on the project, a dashboard might show:
Overall project progress
Number of completed tasks
Tasks in progress
Delayed tasks
Tasks close to their deadlines
Who is responsible for each task
Task schedules and deadlines
A project manager running a building project, for example, could open the dashboard and see the overall completion percentage, how many tasks are in progress, how many are overdue, and which activities need attention, without opening progress files or messaging anyone.
Traditional construction tracking vs. digital project management
Area | Traditional tracking | Digital project management |
|---|---|---|
Information source | Spread across files and channels | Held in one system |
Task tracking | Ask individual teams or compile information by hand | Check task status in the system |
Progress updates | Summarised periodically | Updated as part of the work |
Documents and photos | Spread across chats and folders | Stored and linked to the relevant work |
Project meetings | Information gathered and prepared beforehand | Reviews use information from the system |
Overall visibility | Combine information from several sources | See the whole project in dashboards or reports |
Delayed work | Found through manual checks and follow-ups | Flagged through statuses and schedules |
A digital project management system keeps work information in one place: tasks, owners, deadlines, statuses, photos and progress. Instead of asking “Where are we with this task?”, people check the system for the latest status, use dashboards or reports to get the overall picture, and then drill into the activities that need attention.
Moving to a digital system doesn’t mean giving up Excel or chat apps. They just end up doing the jobs they suit best. Chat handles general communication, Excel handles specialised analysis, and the project management system becomes the central record for tracking work.
What a project management system can do
Bringing in a project management system doesn’t mean digitising every process you have. A good system cuts down repetitive work and makes it clearer where the project stands. That matters most on construction projects, where contractors, engineers, project managers, procurement and others all need the same picture.
1. Plan and prioritise work
Teams should be able to build project plans, define activities, set durations and assign responsibility in a structured way. Structural, MEP, architectural and installation work can each get start and finish dates, so everyone knows what happens first and what follows.
2. Assign and track tasks
On a project with many activities, people need to know exactly who owns each task. The system should let project managers assign tasks with statuses and deadlines, and let team members update progress themselves. That cuts down on follow-up messages.
3. See progress clearly
Teams should be able to see progress for the whole project and for individual tasks, including:
Completed work
Work in progress
Work not yet started
Delayed work
Dashboards or reports then make the current situation easy for project managers to read.
4. Keep project information in one place
One of the biggest headaches in project management is information spread across Excel, LINE, WhatsApp, Slack, email and document folders. A project management system should hold work information centrally, so people can find it and aren’t working from different versions.
5. Manage site documents and information
Construction projects produce a lot of paperwork and site data: drawings, reports, site photos and notes on individual activities.
Features like Photo & Document Management let teams store site photos, drawings and specifications together in the cloud. Folders can follow project phases (before, during and after work) or document type.
When a drawing or specification changes, the people who need it can open the latest version without anyone resending files. Comments can be added to photos for context, and site images no longer live only on someone’s phone.
6. Make team communication more organised
When several parties work together, communication needs to be clear.
Features like In-House Chat keep conversations within each project. People can tag colleagues with @mentions and see read status to confirm a message was seen. Photos and documents shared in a project chat can be saved automatically to the right project folder, and the conversation history is searchable.
That solves the familiar problem of not being able to find an old site photo or instruction somewhere in a LINE or WhatsApp group.
7. Give management a view across projects
Organisations running several projects at once need more than site-level visibility. Management should be able to see status, progress, items needing follow-up and open issues across all projects from one place, without waiting for each project to compile its numbers before a meeting or decision.
KANNA: moving from traditional project management to a digital system
You don’t need a large rollout or a big investment to move from LINE, WhatsApp, Slack and Excel to a digital system. What matters is organising project information so people can find what they need.
KANNA is a project and work management platform where teams plan work, assign tasks, track status and see the whole project in one system.
With In-House Chat, each project’s conversations stay together instead of being split across LINE or WhatsApp groups where older messages are hard to find. Photo & Document Management keeps site photos, drawings and project documents in one cloud system rather than in scattered Google Drive folders or on individual phones.
For teams tracking construction projects, or any project that needs several parties to coordinate, a central system makes progress tracking more structured and means less information gets lost between channels.
Instead of switching between chat apps, opening Excel files and calling people, a project dashboard and management system should make these questions easy to answer:
“Where does the project stand?”
“What’s behind schedule?”
“Who needs to act next?”
With project information in one place, meetings start from the same numbers, and project managers spend less time chasing updates and more time keeping the work moving.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Why might LINE and Excel alone not be enough for large projects?
A: As tasks and stakeholders increase, information spreads across chat groups and files. It gets harder to find, files multiply into competing versions, and tracking tasks consistently becomes difficult. A central system keeps the important project information in one place.
Q: How often should construction progress be updated?
A: It depends on the type and complexity of the project. Fast-moving projects may need daily updates, while others work fine with weekly reporting. Set a clear schedule and make sure every team follows the same standard.
Q: How does a project dashboard help with progress tracking?
A: It brings task statuses, completed work, work in progress, delays and deadlines together in a format that’s easy to read. Project managers can see the overall situation and react sooner to problems.
Q: Do we have to stop using Excel?
A: No. Excel is still useful for calculations, analysis and specialised data work. Information that people update and track together, such as task status, owners and deadlines, is better kept in a central system so everyone works from the same data.
Q: Is project management software worth it for small construction projects?
A: Yes, especially when several people or teams need to coordinate. Project size isn’t the only factor; the complexity of the work and the amount of information to track matter just as much. Setting up a system before projects get complicated also makes it easier to build consistent working habits early.
Read more
