Migration Drag Coefficient

Migration drag coefficient is the ratio of switching cost to the workflow gain a new project management platform actually delivers. Agencies routinely price the subscription and ignore the drag: historical task data that will not import cleanly, client-specific permission maps, automations rebuilt from scratch, and the two to six weeks of reduced delivery throughput while teams relearn. A platform that wins on features but carries high drag can cost more in the first quarter than it saves in the first year. The framework forces the comparison onto total cost of transition, not list price. It also explains why standardization stalls: a single client with unusual access rules or an embedded approval chain can hold an entire agency on a legacy stack. The practical move is to score drag before scoring features, and to pilot on one retainer rather than migrating the whole book at once.