We are a community-supported website. We may earn a small commission on purchases made through our links. Learn more.

45+ Project Timeline Templates in Excel & Word


Featured Image: Project Timeline Tempalte Examples

If you are in a managerial position, you can never ignore the project timeline template tool that lets you plan the phases of the project plan.

Whenever you are asked to present a project plan report or phase-based progress to your heads, it is essential to develop and establish proper templates that impress the firm and also improve the reliability of your project.

Free Download Project Timeline Templates

In general, the project templates are not just restricted to rows and columns. It includes graphs and charts that can be easily understood by the rest of the members.

You need templates to create an effective project template that can be easily transformed into other forms.

This post contains all essential project template to apply for your work, personal and industrial projects.

Simple

If you are new to the concept of the project management timeline, you can directly use these simple excel templates such as gantt chart template where you can write down the tasks to be accomplished along with the deadlines proposed for each of the tasks similar to a market analysis templates.

Project Timeline Template gantt chart for work help simple easy way Project Timeline for work help website edit dates for use Project Timeline simple Project Timeline microsoft website registered track start find services using tool excel

The schedules in an excel project management are usually categorized as weeks or months.

The first step is to list down the tasks.

The next step is to find out the number of weeks required for each task. You can also use planners for more help.

Sometimes, there can be multiple project tasks overlapping during the same time such as in the case of a painting contract (for which our painting estimate templates are very helpful).

In that case, you can differentiate them with multiple color schemes. You can do this easily in the usual spreadsheet software or even Paint tool.

However, this is ideal for beginners.

When you are a project timeline manager, you need to display professionalism and not rely on these applications.

Timeline Template chart Timeline Template chart gantt chart management gantt chart management gantt chart management Timeline Template chart easy way to create gantt chart management templates like new help add use work company

Some projects tend to extend for years and it can be extremely difficult to track down the progress of activities with a spreadsheet or on a blog.

Similarly, it does not look attractive when you present the project template outcomes at a meeting.

You may have to get creative and list benchmarks achieved at different points of time during a year in the template.

Some of the excel templates listed here act as examples to categorize results based on year and department and list them in template as a graph or a chart with a specific color scheme.

This template is not only simple but also effective that every project timeline manager should get used to.

Annual

Are you on a project timelines that will last for a year? How have you planned to track the progress?

The conventional calendar system or a spreadsheet will not do. You need annual project management plan timeline excel that can tell you the right way to study the progress and plan for the upcoming year.

Usually, a year-long project template attains its completion when the project plan report is provided by the team to the client.

Before we explain more on such projects, here are a few excel templates that you should use to create if you are associated with a project timeline plan of similar duration.

create project templates add and create new project templates excel need like add and create new project templates excel need like Timeline Template chart

Remember that you have to break the year-long project management plan into multiple milestones that can be accomplished in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year and then prepare individual timelines that can be circulated to respective departments.

Subsequently, those excel templates can be used and the reports or results should be issued to the project plan manager.

These annual formats are meant to showcase a crisp overview of what you have achieved in each month of the year. It has to include the milestone or key task accomplished under each month with appropriate pointers.

This can be easy for the project management stakeholders to memorize and assess the improvement or outcomes on the whole.

It is also possible to identify the areas that require improvement or the months where the project timeline team has not performed to the mark.

This is a model for the project plan team to reflect and stakeholders to understand the competency of the members.

Roadmap

Can you believe that your project plan timeline can also be used as a roadmap?

Your performance in a project can essentially let the organization to draft the roadmap for the months to come.

It is perhaps difficult to derive a roadmap directly from the timeline but we make it easy with these excel.

Sometimes, you may have to enclose the performance of a complete project in one PowerPoint slide which is a cumbersome task.

This tells you that you can either split the accomplishments into different quarters or based on the teams or based on the outcomes so it becomes easier for the management to evaluate and take decisions.

All you need to do is fill this template and place the points in appropriate positions and you are done with your slide.

Alternatively, you can arrange the tasks chronologically for the audience to understand it better.

Editable

If you are quite experienced in using a timeline, it is high time that you go for editable in different formats like PDF, Excel, and Word.

project plan data planning rights reserved data planning data planning with dates company plan template with support company plan template with support

In all of these marketing plan color template, you can notice that you can add legal notes as well as the statuses of tasks.

Further, it is possible to estimate the total costs spent to achieve a particular milestone.

Ideally, a competent project manager can make use of timeline to perform multiple purposes and not confuse with too many tools.

Irrespective of the total duration proposed, use this template and see your efficiency levels growing!

Gantt Charts Based

In general, we can create project timeline plan just in the form of a spreadsheet or a table but using software like Microsoft Project can give an excellent outlook and helps you do the job rightly.

If you are not used to such applications, it is just better to limit to these templates that can give you an understanding of how to list the tasks and how tasks get converted to timeline.

project managers gantt chart template gantt chart template uses cookies project managers

This marketing plan/model is advantageous to follow for several reasons such as tracking business performance for the best results.

  • It is possible to directly allocate the roles against each task so such members carry out their responsibilities diligently.
  • The interrelationships between tasks can easily be identified in this model. In other words, altering one task can affect the rest of the tasks as they are interconnected. This is one way within the scope of the project.
  • This powerpoint  information model lets you calculate the costs spent towards each activity as accurately as possible. As the tasks are interconnected, we can also share the roles between activities and reduce the chances of running out of budget. The main advantage is that this model alerts the team when the project is going out of scope or is likely to face financial overhead.
  • This powerpoint model does not want the project team to use multiple applications to communicate the schedule and know what to do next. As this is a shared model, everyone can keep track of the activities scheduled and do the task individually or as a team based on the needs.
  • Using the Gantt chart model PowerPoint can also remind the project manager of the complexities faced by the team in achieving a milestone and the likelihood of a constraint that can arise in the next phase. This will let the project management plan for risks and contingencies without delays.
  • How do you know if you have over-allocated tasks to a resource or used too many resources for the same task? This model gives you a warning with other indicators like costs and time spent.

Need more models/ project plan in PowerPoint? Here you go!

free project plan powerpoint free project powerpoint project plan free project powerpoint project plan free project visual designed in powerpoint project plan free project visual designed - create a project with team members project plan

How To Use Project Plan Timeline Effectively For Business?

Using a project management timeline as such does not make you potential project managers.

You need to maximize the use of the timeline and data for the entire business project tasks.

Here are a few steps to make that happen.

  • If it is a new project, begin with scope definition for the project timeline and then create a WBS (work breakdown structure) that will let you evaluate duration, data, dependencies, resources, and milestones that can influence the progress. Finally, build the timeline. The other aspect to keep in mind during timeline creation is to allow duration in every milestone to sort out issues and communicate with stakeholders. This reduces the overall risks involved and also does not impact costs and duration negatively.
  • If it is a long-term project, make it a habit to create the basic timeline and then milestone-based timeline. This will let you achieve milestones with better precision and utmost satisfaction. Instead of maintaining a lengthy timeline and sharing with stakeholders, it is a better idea to convert a task-based timeline into a pictorial representation.
  • Integrate the timeline with the human resource plan and risk project management plan. This will ease the task and mitigate the overall risks involved.

Always maintain a chronological order when you create the timeline for a big project. This will make it possible for stakeholders associated with a project management to grab the big picture and take effective decisions.

As this is usually stored for official reasons, gain a deeper understanding of using this tool before you directly apply to the project.

Conclusion

All the timeline templates listed in this post can actually groom your managerial skills at no additional costs.

It also becomes handy for you to present the report to your stakeholders at the end of each milestone.

This is not a painstaking task and is absolutely perfect to lean for anyone who wishes to organize life better and also avoid overheads on a weekly or monthly basis.

These improve your competencies as well as teach you secret hacks to maximize your performance without having to invest much on the efforts.

If you liked them, do share them with your friends.

Sara Cemin

Hi, I am Sara Cemin and I’m all about designing meaningful stuff such as templates, Forms that are required in various activities of business and academics.I take a research-driven approach to cumulate the best templates on any topic,