Most intranets underperform not because of technology, but because their purpose is unclear and organisational ownership is weak. Even with significant investment, many intranets struggle to deliver ongoing value. Research shows that intranets deliver value only when these are treated as strategic organisational platforms, not mere IT or communications tools.

What distinguishes successful intranets

Successful intranets are not technology projects but leadership initiatives that require clear intranet strategy and governance.

• Clear purpose linked to its way of work and goals
• Reliable, governed content that employees trust
• Visible leadership engagement that signals importance

For leaders, the message is simple

Clarity, practical leadership, and continuous stewardship result in sustained intranet value. When these are in place, intranets become effective digital workplace platforms that improve employee experience, alignment and productivity.

Start with purpose, not platform

A recurring cause of intranet failure is the absence of a clearly articulated purpose and intranet strategy. Too many initiatives begin with a platform decision rather than a strategic question.

What organisational challenges should the intranet help to solve?

Intranets explicitly linked to organisational goals are significantly more likely to demonstrate measurable value. Successful intranets are anchored in a number of clear objectives, such as reducing friction in internal communication and supporting knowledge sharing across silos.²

Page views and login frequency tell little about real impact. Organisations that align intranet strategy with business goals, and measure outcomes such as search success and task completion, report significantly higher engagement and impact.^3a Research also recommends outcome-oriented measures such as reductions in duplicated effort, and completion rates of key employee journeys like on-boarding or service requests.^3b

Design around how people actually work

Since 2020, research shows that intranets succeed when they support actual work behaviours – prioritising usability over feature lists.⁴

Common design problems

• Complex navigation
• Ineffective search
• Content structured around organisational silos rather than user needs

Human-centred design practices

• User research
• Journey mapping
• Iterative usability testing

Multiple industry studies show that intranets designed in this way achieve measurably higher engagement, trust, and perceived usefulness.^5a,5b For example, modern best practice guidelines from Coveo⁶ show that relevance engines, personalized results, and employee-centric design correlate with higher workplace engagement.

Personalisation and mobile access

Employee expectations have shifted. Research indicates that personalised intranet experiences – tailored by role, location or context – reduce cognitive load and increase relevance for users.^7,8

Mobile access is equally critical: for frontline, hybrid and remote workers, a mobile-first intranet is often the primary way the platform is used, and without it, large parts of the workforce may be excluded from communication and services.⁹

Common pitfalls that undermine intranet value

What this means for leaders

When intranets work well, the benefits extend beyond communication to measurable improvements in productivity and alignment. In hybrid and increasingly complex work environments, these outcomes are strategically significant.

• Improved employee experience and engagement
• Faster knowledge flow and decision-making
• Reduced friction in communication
• Lessened duplicated effort
• Stronger organisational alignment

Conclusion

The intranet is a strategic organisational platform that reflects how people work and organisations function

Intranet excellence is not delivered at launch, but built over time, grounded in real work, and sustained through deliberate attention to content quality, governance and leadership engagement. Its success depends less on choosing the right technology and more on clarity of purpose, fitting design, visible leadership, and continuous stewardship.

Leaders should embed intranet success into organisational KPIs, governance frameworks, and executive behaviours to ensure sustained strategic value. In this sense, intranet governance is not an IT responsibility alone but a leadership discipline embedded in the organisation’s digital workplace strategy.

• Project Online will be shut down on September 30, 2026
• Project Server 2016 and 2019 move into security-updates-only and then out of support
• Several desktop and cloud variants reach lifecycle transitions within the same timeframe

Individually, these dates may seem to look manageable. Together, they form a compound risk that affects governance, security, cost predictability, and the way organisations run projects.

Lifecycle decisions are often assessed per product. A common argument is simply: “Project Server is still supported”. What this approach overlookos is the portfolio effect. When multiple platforms transition simultaneously, organisations face:

• Overlapping migration pressure
• Limited availability of specialist skills
• Rising operational and compliance risk
• Unplanned cost escalation

Table 1 – Life-cycle milestones across 16 Microsoft project management products

Organisations planning a Microsoft Project migration must now assess multiple lifecycle transitions simultaneously. This life-cycle table – which you also find in the free whitepaper (no registration) – makes it visible at a glance, showing 16 Microsoft project management products and their support timelines side by side. In the whitepaper, the page thereafter shows “Table 2 – Focus on decision-relevant capabilities of 8 active products, not an exhaustive list”.

This is where “waiting a bit longer” stops being a neutral option.

Impact SharePoint 2013 workflow retirement on Project Online

The retirement of SharePoint 2013 workflows on 2 April 2026 further compresses the migration timeline concerning Project Online.

Automations in Project Online that rely on SharePoint 2013 workflows – such as approvals, change control or onboarding – will stop functioning when the service is retired. This creates a material risk of disrupted portfolio governance and stalled project approvals up to six months before the Project Online service itself is discontinued.

You can resolve this temporarily by replacing these workflows with Power Automate ones. Then you have bought some time before migrating from Project Online to another solution.
Using Power Automate for Project Lifecycle Workflows in Project Online – Part 1

Supported does not mean future-proof

A key insight from the whitepaper is the distinction between:

• Technical support status, and
• Strategic sustainability

Some platforms remain supported but are positioned for sustainment rather than innovation. Microsoft’s strategic investment has shifted toward a role-based project ecosystem, deliberately separating:

• Execution (Planner)
• Planning and control (Project desktop / Project Plans)
• Governance and insight (Power BI, Power Platform)

There is no single successor to Project Server or Project Online. Migration is therefore not a lift-and-shift, but a redesign of how project work is organised and governed.

Lifecycle transitions require operating model decisions

Lifecycle transitions are therefore not only technical migration events. They also force organisations to reconsider how project work is organised and governed. In the Microsoft ecosystem, planning, execution, collaboration and reporting are now distributed across multiple services. This means migration decisions inevitably affect the project operating model: how portfolios are governed, how teams collaborate, and how information flows between planning, delivery and reporting.

Organisations that treat migration purely as a tooling replacement risk recreating the same structural limitations in a new platform landscape. Those that treat it as an operating model decision can use the transition to improve portfolio governance, transparency and decision-making.

Why 2026 matters

The decisions organisations defer today will still need to be made – but under less favourable conditions:

• Higher risk
• Higher cost
• Less freedom of choice

Lifecycle milestones do not force a specific solution, but they do force a decision.

What was once a single integrated platform has evolved into a role-based ecosystem that separates execution, planning, governance and reporting across multiple products. This shift has direct financial, operational, and risk implications for organisations that do not adapt in time.

Table 1 – Life-cycle milestones across 16 Microsoft project management products

This life-cycle table – also included in the free whitepaper (no registration required) – makes the transition visible at a glance, showing 16 Microsoft project management products and their support timelines side by side. In the whitepaper, on the page thereafter you will find “Table 2 – Focus on decision-relevant capabilities of 8 active products, not an exhaustive list”.

This is where “waiting a bit longer” stops being a neutral option.

Whitepaper

To support executive decision-making, I have published a whitepaper that explains what this change means in practice – and how organisations can respond in a controlled, future-proof way.

From tool replacement to operating model change

A common assumption is that moving away from Project Server or Project Online is a technical exercise: replace the platform, migrate the data, and continue operating as before. In practice, this approach often increases cost and complexity while delivering limited business value.

For many organisations this therefore becomes a governance decision rather than a purely technical migration. Choices about tooling directly influence how project portfolios are governed, how information flows between teams, and how leadership gains visibility into delivery performance.

Microsoft’s modern project and portfolio management model is based on:

• Different tools for different roles
• Reduced customisation and lower technical debt
• Clear separation between delivery, control, governance, and insight

This means the transition is not about feature parity, but about modernising the project operating model. Organisations that attempt a one-to-one functional replacement typically encounter:

• Low adoption and limited return on investment
• Escalating support and maintenance costs
• Recreated legacy risks in a new technical landscape

The whitepaper explains how to avoid these outcomes and where executives should deliberately not migrate existing functionality.

What executives will find in the whitepaper

The whitepaper is written for boards, CFOs, CIOs, and senior management who require clarity rather than technical detail. It provides:

• An overview of the current Microsoft project and portfolio management landscape
• Lifecycle and support implications for Project Server and Project Online
• Three pragmatic migration paths aligned to organisational scale and governance maturity
• Indicative cost and risk considerations, including total cost of ownership
• Clear guidance on what should be retired rather than rebuilt

The emphasis is on decision-making, risk control, and financial sustainability.

Why this requires action now

With Project Online scheduled to stop and Project Server approaching the end of its strategic product life, the window for controlled decision-making is narrowing. Deferring decisions beyond 2026 typically leads to:

• Higher run costs
• Increased security and compliance exposure
• Reduced flexibility and higher change costs later

The key question for executives is no longer whether change is required, but how deliberately and on what timeline it will be addressed.