Categories: data security
While we all hope that nothing bad will happen to our project data, it is really important to have backups in place.
Backups protect against data loss. I know that seems really obvious to say, but regular backup safeguard you and your project data against system failures, human errors, and accidents. Because who hasn't ever worried about reverting to a previous version of a spreadsheet or overwriting a change that you shouldn't? Well, those are small examples of the impact if data is lost. In a more substantive way, having a recent backup means the project can carry on with minimal disruption.
It's often not the project manager's responsibility to set backups in place, because these will be managed by your IT team. But it is worth asking what data is backed up and how you would access it if you ever needed to because a long term project that loses all of its schedules and financial spreadsheets... That situation could be very difficult to recover.
Another thing to consider is corruption. That is, data corruption or errors, because if there are problems with the data, a recent backup can restore the latest saved version and that will give you a fighting chance at recovering what you need to and keeping your records consistent and accurate.
As I said, you probably don't get the opportunity to set the backup frequency, or even to identify whether or not a backup will happen for the particular system that you're using. But some cloud based project management software will give you the choice in the settings. If you have the choice, pick a regular interval that works for you. If it's a tool that you're using all day every day, you'll want a more frequent backup because then you can minimise the risk of data loss between the backup windows. If it's something that you only go into infrequently, you might be able to get away with having a backup once a week or once a month.
Putting aside the issue of backing up an entire project management software system for a moment, let's think about the different versions of project documents and artefacts that you use on a regular basis. When you've got version controlled backups, for example in your online document storage, that can give you the chance to roll back to the previous version if you end up with discrepancies. For example, somebody accidentally going in and deleting slides from your steering deck, or wiping all the data from a tab in a spreadsheet.
Your IT team may share that there are a few different types of backups that you can do, so let's just look at those for a second.
Full backups give you complete copies of all project data, which gives you the confidence that everything is recoverable. These are quite expensive though.
Incremental backups only back up the changes made since the last backup. That's faster, and means your storage utilisation is less. But it can be harder to recover if you have to recover everything.
I think these days most of us rely on cloud storage, which is storing backups in the cloud linked to the software system or app that we're using. That gives you remote access which is a reassurance against hardware failure, because if you've ever had a laptop die after you spilled coffee on it, then you know that it's important to have off-site backups and remote backups and cloud backups because storing things on your hard drive can cause problems later (Don't ask me how I know).
Take this article as a reminder that it is important to manage your project management tools and documents using automated backup solutions that reduce the risk of human error and takeaway the fact that you have to think about doing the backups at all.
Mostly your tools will have this built in because it's not an unusual requirement, but if you can't see how a product is backing itself up then it's worth asking the vendor or your IT team. Just to be doubly sure that you have that confidence and security that all of your project-related data is safe.
Posted on: August 11, 2026 12:00 AM |
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