How to Create a Project Timeline: Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Project Management in 2022

You probably faced situations when you missed your deadlines, your team members became confused, and everything went haywire. One of the reasons could be a poorly designed timeline or no timeline at all.

Right, projects can not exist without timelines. You will not accomplish work without understanding start and end dates. That is why every project manager must know how to create a project timeline.

It’s possible to generate a timetable using one of the reliable project management timeline tools. Many of them offer a Gantt chart as the easy and powerful way to plan a project timeline. Let’s get more info about the ways of creating it.

What is a project timeline?

A project timeline is the beating heart of every project. It serves as a visual list of tasks or activities placed in chronological order, which allows users to see the entirety of the project in one place.

It also helps users keep their projects on track, demonstrating how team members will accomplish their agenda.

A typical project management timeline consists of the following elements:

• Tasks that must be accomplished.
• Task duration.
• Task date (start and due date).
• Task dependencies.

Project management timelines are commonly used for:

• Tracking project progress.
• Visualizing events.
• Managing time.
• Improving communication.

Read also our related article: Outstanding Timeline Examples.

What are the benefits of building a project timeline?

Generating a timeline can provide significant benefits for your project. Here are some of them:

• Makes a project plan complete providing a visual overview of work from start to finish.
• Ensures deadlines are met.
• Visualizes the common goal allowing team members recognize their roles in the process.
• Focuses on the big picture.
• Keeps everyone aligned.
• Shows the chronological order.
• Reveals dependencies.
• Prevents bottlenecks.
• Demonstrates how change affects the project.

What are the challenges in building a project timeline?

Ther are some common challenges you may face while creating a timeline for your project:

• Estimation — when it’s not easy to estimate how long it’ll take to complete a task.
• Insufficient project information.
• Resource availability.

So, how to create a project management timeline? Now it’s time to figure it out.

How to create project timelines in ten steps

We have broken the process down. Let’s explore each step.

Step 1. Writing a brief

By this initial step, you should already have a project vision with all the important details. Your project brief should include a summary of all these details that will serve as the point of reference for your team.

Step 2. Organizing the scope of your project

The scope is the basement. A project scope statement should include the deliverables you want to produce by the end of the work, all project requirements, priorities, and constraints.

Step 3. Creating a WBS

The next step is building a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). It will require splitting your project into work elements. You can divide deliverables defined in the scope into smaller deliverables, for example.

Step 4. Writing a task list

Projects typically have many constituent parts. Now you need to break your work down into these smaller pieces.

When dividing your work into tasks, make sure that the tasks are neither too big nor too small.

Step 5. Defining dependencies

A task dependency means that one task in your project cannot be started until another one has been completed.

Defining task dependencies does not require any specific skill. When you create a visual diagram, you can visualize these dependencies.

Step 6. Estimating time

Estimating the time required to complete each task is also a crucial stage. If you experience some difficulties with the estimation process, explore your previous projects or talk to the experts.

Step 7. Allocating resources

Your teammates are also resources.

Managers should consider the preferences and abilities of all colleagues to generate more accurate timelines, as teammates are also resources.

Step: 8. Adding milestones

A milestone is a critical event on a project timeline. It tracks progress and gets intermittent feedback from clients. You should regularly set milestones and based on certain key moments, like completing a complex task.

Step 9. Choosing the best project management tool for building an excellent timeline

It’s possible to generate a project timeline in a spreadsheet or via another manual method. However, creating it with a PM timeline tool that can be updated in real-time is a more professional way.

Step 10. Sharing the timeline with all stakeholders

A timeline can be shared with all stakeholders. It allows them to review, discuss, and approve files in one place simultaneously.

Now it’s time to explore and test the best project timeline software.

PM timeline software examples

The power of a professional project timeline tool allows you to line your tasks end to end, adjust their lengths, add project milestones and task dependencies, set deadlines, and more.

When picking up an appropriate timeline software solution, you should consider some critical aspects of project management and planning requirements.

Here’re some actual examples of reliable tools:

GanttPRO

GanttPRO is one of the best project management timeline tools as it offers excellent features for planning and managing timelines of various complexity.

The platform is based on a Gantt chart. It helps plan and schedule tasks, add dependencies, set milestones, manage resources, and collaborate.

With its help, you can export and import charts from different software. The tool also provides helpful Gantt chart templates for an easy start.

Vizzlo

Vizzlo is also a robust platform that will help you answer the question “how to create a project timeline?”

This tool boosts productivity by providing intuitive tools to generate designer-grade charts and timetables in no time.

It is used for project management, tracking progress, creating marketing reports, financial forecasts, etc. Vizzlo is easy to use and friendly for remote teams.

Both tools we’ve described are great, but they are not the only choice for you. You can also consider popular platforms that are on everyone’s lips.

Conclusion

A project timeline assists in making progress efficiently. Hopefully, you’ve learned how to do a project timeline with no pain. The basics we’ve shared will definitely help you to succeed.

Create your stunning timelines and make your project team winners!

Find more information about creating a project timeline here: How to Create a Project Timeline and Make it Your Strategic Ally https://blog.ganttpro.com/en/how-to-create-a-timeline-steps-tips-and-tricks/.