We tried:

white boards

whole business software

magnetic white boards

kanbans

and of course spreadsheets
They are either too complex, too simple, or just no one ever updated them, so you can not trust any of the data, you need to check every project. Everyone was too busy.
So what did we do that was special? I thought we should make a more interactive, responsive spreadsheet thing, that was fun and it rewarded you for updating things. It should also be cool and a chill vibe that we would actually use.
So jumping back to today, we are on version 3. People trust us with their business and get things done using the solution we created.