The spreadsheet is not a compromise. It's the right tool.
Project management software exists on a spectrum from "almost flexible enough" to "requires a two-day implementation." Somewhere in the middle is the tool your team is actually using, which is probably a spreadsheet someone built to patch the gaps in the official system.
We skipped the middle step. Every project management tool we tried was good at its designed workflow and awkward at everything else. Spreadsheets don't have a designed workflow. They are a structured surface that adapts to yours.
The Situation Room
At La Nao, the core of our project coordination is a single sheet we call the Situation Room. It has seven columns: Date, Owner, Description, Goal Closure Date, Comments, Reference 1, Reference 2.
The reference columns link directly to email threads. Every open item points to the conversation where it lives. The Situation Room is the map; the email archive is the territory. You never have to copy context between systems or wonder where the details are. You click the link.
This sounds simple because it is. That's why it works.
Why this beats dedicated tools
- No hidden state. Everything is in the cells. There are no status workflows, no "moving cards between columns," no UI you have to learn. If the information is there, you can see it.
- AI reads it natively. A spreadsheet is a text file. Any AI tool can read it, analyse it, and generate reports from it without a paid integration or an API key. Try that with Asana.
- It lasts. The .xlsx format has been readable for decades and will be for decades more. Your project history doesn't disappear if a SaaS company shuts down.
- Everyone already knows how to use it. Training time: zero.
"No matter which project management tool we tried, it would be great for certain things and not perfect for others. The Situation Room spreadsheet has carried so much weight with so little work." — Rodrigo, La Nao
Calendars: underused and underrated
Most teams use calendars for one thing: scheduling meetings. That's about 20% of what a calendar can do for a business. The rest — reminders, deadline tracking, supplier notifications, time-sensitive follow-ups — gets handled by a mix of sticky notes, task apps, and things that get forgotten.
A calendar event is just structured data with a date, a description, and optionally a list of people to notify. That's exactly what a reminder needs. There's no reason to use a separate app for it.
The reminder calendar
We maintain a dedicated calendar for reminders, separate from meetings. When something needs attention on a specific date — a supplier follow-up, a payment deadline, a decision that needs revisiting — we create an all-day event with a description that includes the subject and a link to the relevant email thread. It shows up on the right day, in the calendar every team member already uses, with full context one click away.
No separate reminder app. No notification from yet another tool. Just the calendar.
Including outside parties
Calendar invites can include anyone with an email address. If a supplier needs to deliver something by a specific date, add them as an attendee on the reminder. They receive a notification. You have a record that they were informed. No email to draft, no follow-up to schedule manually.
"We add suppliers as attendees on relevant reminders. It's the most hands-off follow-up mechanism we've found." — Rodrigo, La Nao
The standard: CalDAV
Hetzner Storage Share includes CalDAV support — the standard calendar protocol supported by every calendar application in existence. Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, any Android or iOS app — they all speak CalDAV. Set it up once and every device your team uses has access, automatically.
Your calendar data lives on your infrastructure, not Google's. It's exportable in the standard ICS format at any time. And because it's a standard, it will work with whatever calendar app your team prefers five years from now.
Download the Situation Room template
We share the exact spreadsheet template La Nao uses for project tracking, along with our CalDAV setup guide, on the mailing list.
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