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A project timeline is a tool that helps you to organize the processes and activities of your project. A good one will help give clear objectives, break tasks down into manageable parts, and provide accountability throughout your team’s work.
As part of a project management strategy, a project timeline is a visual depiction that helps firms communicate milestones, necessary resources, and dependencies. This schedule should be part of a wider project scope planning process that includes creating a statement of work, a team breakdown structure, and a formal list of deliverables.
After you’ve established your timetable, you’ll want to be able to manage your project using a tool that’s simple to set up and highly visible, allowing both the team and stakeholders to view the progress at a glance.
The length of a project’s timetable varies greatly based on its complexity, resources, and deadline. Most project scope papers, on the other hand, maybe developed by following the key stages mentioned above, beginning with the first: developing a project scope statement. The project timetable will be built around this document.
The five stages of constructing a project timetable are as follows:
1. Make a statement on the project’s scope.
Defining the limits with a good project scope statement is the first step in creating an efficient project timeframe. This document will aid in selling a project to stakeholders, preventing scope creep, and ensuring team collaboration. Objectives, description, rationale, deliverables, acceptance criteria, restrictions, and assumptions are some of the aspects of the statement that may vary by project or company.
You’ll need to accomplish the following to construct this project statement:
Participate in the Project Team
The team should get together to talk about the project as a whole, identifying and agreeing on the project’s primary deliverables. The team should next use a whiteboard or sticky notes in the hierarchy to develop sub deliverables, activities, and tasks. Finally, each team member should think about their own contributions to the project and what could be missing, if anything.
Define Business & Project Objectives
The business and project objectives are high-level statements about aims that are succinct and to the point. The business aim should be linked to the company’s wider objectives, which are set as part of the overall business plan. In 2019, a corporate target may be to reduce customer attrition by 5% while increasing new business by 15%.
The project aim is what the project is trying to accomplish. It should be linked to the company’s objectives by assisting in the achievement of these objectives. For example, you’ve decided that a CRM is required to efficiently sell and serve clients, as well as to minimize churn and grow new business. “Implement a CRM with all workers trained by the third quarter of 2019,” for example, maybe your project goal.
It’s a good idea to apply the SMART technique while thinking about goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based are the acronyms for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.
Create a succinct description
The description gives an overview of the completed project and establishes its limits. What is “in scope” and what is “out of scope,” in other words. This ensures that all internal project team members are aware of the limits and that all external parties (e.g., stakeholders) are aware of demands that are beyond the scope (and will, therefore, need to be approved). Using CRM as an example, consider the following:
In scope:
- Use a customer relationship management system (CRM) to keep track of service and sales relationships.
- Make the foundational product and service pipelines.
- Members of the team should be trained.
Out of bounds:
- This excludes the content and setup of email campaigns.
- Internal communication automation will not be included (e.g., lead routing)
Define the criteria for acceptance.
Before the project may be approved, certain prerequisites and conditions must be satisfied. It’s a set of particular criteria that demonstrates to the client (company owner, stakeholder, etc.) that the task is finished. These criteria may look like this for an internal CRM implementation:
- The project manager has finished and signed off on quality assurance testing in both the sandbox and “live” CRM environments.
- The vendor CRM certification has been passed by all workers.
Recognize the Constraints
A restriction is a potential stumbling block or danger to a project. Time, scope, and money are the three main restrictions. These are interconnected, thus putting a load on one will have an effect on the others, resulting in a worse outcome. If you’re working on a CRM project with solely internal resources, your team’s resources may be a constraint: “The sales crew is really busy selling, so they’ll have to work the CRM testing into their schedules.”
2. Establish a Work Breakdown Structure.
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a hierarchical map of all the tasks that must be completed, dividing a large project into smaller, more manageable chunks. It’s usually shown in the form of an organizational chart. It provides an objective assessment of the effort, skills, and resources needed to complete the project. Using a WBS reduces the chances of forgetting a project stage or adding something that isn’t in the scope.
The purpose of a work breakdown structure is to guarantee that all work required to meet the project’s objectives is precisely scheduled. You may accomplish this by breaking down the work into key deliverables, then primary components and sub deliverables as the next level of work, and assigning work percentages based on the list of deliverables and sub deliverables from the brainstorming session used to construct your project scope statement.
Establish Work Packages
A work package, as defined by projectmanagement.com, “is the effort necessary to generate a deliverable within a project.” In a WBS, it is the smallest unit of work. The description of work, start and completion dates, needed resources, and expected expenses are all included in work packages, which are normally held by one individual. The influence of each work item on project scope in terms of money and time will be allocated a percentage, and the total will add up to 100%.
Finishing plumbing work, for example, might be a major part of the project. This assignment, however, is dependent on a number of sub deliverables. As a result, labor packages such as roughing in the plumbing, installing fixtures and trim, and testing the system would be included.
Once the project is started, the work package owner will be responsible for reporting progress to the project manager, and it should have a particular result or deliverable. Tasks or activities are divided further into work bundles. These are the real “to-dos” (for example, adding users to CRM) that come together to fulfill the task packages.
The following stages are used to define work packages:
Step 1: Make a list of all the tasks that must be completed.
In a project, tasks are discrete actions or units of labor that must be completed. They are the “to-do” items in the work packages that assist the project get closer to completion. Each work package will include at least one, if not more, tasks. Each work should have a clear start and finish date, as well as a budget and resources allocation.
Step 2: Compile a list of resources
People, money, equipment, facilities, and everything else required to finish a project are referred to as resources. Resources will be allotted to each of your activities. Determine the abilities you’ll need for each assignment in terms of individuals. Check on your team’s availability after you’ve identified them. It’s probable that their project responsibilities will have to be completed in addition to their regular responsibilities. If you’re going to hire personnel from outside the company, you’ll need to plan ahead of time.
Step 3: Calculate Task Time
You’ll need to know how long each job will take when you list them. Consider the resources you’ve allocated, and then collaborate with your team to come up with an estimate. If you and your team are unclear about time estimates, request the assistance of someone who has done similar work before.
Assign a percentage to each deliverable in the project.
Each WBS job should be assigned a percentage depending on its influence on the overall project in terms of time or resources, with the entire amount adding up to 100%. This is referred to as the “100% rule,” because it informs the project manager that all work has been estimated and accounted for. Begin with the most important deliverables. If the project is to construct a home, for example, the WBS project % split may be as follows:
Internal = 45.60 percent + Foundation = 24% + External = 30% = 100%
Then, using the same technique, repeat the procedure for each major deliverable’s key components and sub deliverables. For example, in Foundation, you allocate 18.2 percent to the major component Excavate, with sub deliverables of 7.9 percent and 10.3 percent. Excavate’s 18.2 percent will be equaled by adding these sub deliverables together. This process is repeated until all primary components and sub deliverables have been identified.
3. Determine the repercussions
Tasks that cannot be begun until another job has been finished are known as dependencies. When you prepared coffee this morning, you probably depended on two basic but critical task dependencies: a grinder to get the beans into brewable shape and a filter to deposit the ground beans into. The beans were reliant on the grinder for their existence. The ground beans were necessary for the filter to work. And you had to add water to make the final product.
Finish-to-start is the most prevalent dependence connection, in which the first job must be accomplished before the second may begin. There are, however, four task dependencies in all. The following are the details:
- Finish-to-start; means that the first activity must be accomplished before moving on to the next.
- Start-to-finish: Before the second job can be completed, the first task must be completed.
- Finish-to-finish: The second assignment cannot be completed until the first has been completed.
- Start-to-finish: The second duty does not begin until the first has been completed.
4. Identify Milestones & Critical Path
Milestones are important components of a project schedule because they represent key events that show how a project is progressing toward its objective. They are the most critical events in your project, yet they aren’t timed. Consider them a flashing light that indicates “you’ve arrived at a critical juncture in your project’s development.”
Here are some examples of milestones to put in your timeline:
- Internally or to your customer, you’ll need to make important deliveries.
- Stakeholders’ or the client’s approval
- Achieving a key performance metric (KPI)
- Meetings of importance
- Dates for the beginning and conclusion of phases
The critical route is the sequence of actions that, if delayed, would jeopardize your ability to meet project milestones or deliverables on time. It’s crucial to establish the key route on your project timetable so that all stakeholders are aware of which activities have the least amount of slack and who is accountable for completing them, allowing work to be prioritized.
The fundamental processes for determining the critical routes and how milestones might be utilized are outlined below.
- Make a list of all the tasks that must be completed in order to finish the project.
- Calculate how long each job will take to finish.
- Make a list of all dependencies: which tasks must be completed before others may begin.
- Make a list of the project’s milestones.
Find the shortest route for your tasks to accomplish the project. This, in conjunction with milestones, can help you better grasp how much slack, or leeway for missed deadlines, you’ve built into your project timetable. If you take too much time off, your project may be pushed down the priority list by your coworkers. If you have too little, you risk offending your client or other stakeholders by failing to meet important deadlines.
5. Create a graphical timeline for your project.
It’s time to put your project scope, deliverables, and work breakdown structure in a graphical manner once you’ve defined them. This ensures that project stakeholders have easy access to information such as milestones and key paths. This visual depiction of the project timetable is frequently kept distinct from the project scope paper, making it simple to update and distribute after the project has begun.
A Gantt chart, which employs colored bars to represent a project’s timetable, is the most common approach to depict a project timeline. The vertical axis represents tasks, while the horizontal axis represents time. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are the two most-used apps for creating project timeline templates. Templates are also available from third-party software firms.
Make a project timeline in Excel.
While Microsoft Excel has long been the industry standard for business applications, it may be difficult to master. It’s also not as collaborative as it might be since it’s not online. With that out of the way, the number of Gantt-style project timelines you can design is practically limitless. There are lots of possibilities online, whether you want to make one from scratch or select one of many free, customizable designs.
Excel timetable for a little project Microsoft.com provided this image.
For a project timeline, use Google Sheets.
Google Sheets may also be used to construct a Gantt-style project timeline.
Additional benefits of utilizing Google Sheets for your project timetable include:
- Team members may make real-time updates to the timeline.
- The most current version is available to everyone.
- Changes are stored automatically, and a revision history is shown.
- Changes are reflected quickly throughout the web and on all devices.
Google Sheets project timeline Smartsheet.com provided this image.
Make use of project schedule templates.
While each project is unique in terms of the work required to finish it, the resources available, and the overall timetable, you may obtain templates to use in a program like Excel to get you started. However, when you sign up for Monday’s project management tool, you’ll get a project timeline template, and since it’s cloud-based, everyone participating in the project can monitor progress in real-time without the need for regular email updates.
Conclusion
The creation of a project timetable is critical for project management teams, particularly for initiatives that span weeks or months. A timetable is made up of a precise project scope statement and a detailed work breakdown structure that ensures all needed tasks are identified and tracked. You’ll be able to choose a project timeline template after you’ve identified dependencies and milestones.
It’s just as vital to use the correct tool for producing a project timetable as it is to decide which team member will handle certain duties. Monday’s project management software is very visually appealing and user-friendly. They provide hundreds of pre-made project templates for a number of commercial applications, as well as the option to create your own.
