A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Project Timeline

Source：image 1

Planning and project success go hand-in-hand. When we plan, we’re essentially progressing from idea to implementation, documenting every step we must take to reach our goal. This increases visibility, making the execution of projects more streamlined, focused, and efficient.

Of course, it can be difficult to know where to start with planning, especially if you’re managing a big project. Luckily, creating a timeline isn’t difficult - you can whip one up in a matter of hours.

Before getting into how to create a project timeline, let’s take a quick look at what they are and why you should make one.

What Is a Project Timeline?

A project timeline is a visual representation of your project’s deliverables displayed in chronological order. It provides you, your team, and your stakeholders with an in-depth overview from start to finish, including tasks, dependencies, milestones, and delivery dates.

Why Do I Need A Project Timeline?

If you’re more of a ‘doer’ than a planner, we can hear what you’re thinking. Surely the time spent creating a timeline could be used to actually do the project, right?

Well, you could just jump right in. However, according to the Project Management Institute, businesses that undervalue project management or have a poor project management strategy in place have a 50 percent project failure rate.

Not only do these businesses suffer from missed deadlines and dissatisfied stakeholders, but they also incur higher losses.

Source：image 2

On the bright side, businesses with a comprehensive project management strategy have a much higher chance of success. Here are just a few of the benefits of creating a project timeline.

• It provides equal, in-depth visibility. It’s important to ensure everybody on your team has a clear understanding of your project. For remote and hybrid teams in particular, a comprehensive timeline is a project management must-do because it keeps everybody on the same page.
• It acts as a reference. Your project timeline document contains a wealth of important information about your project, making it a great resource to refer back to should you or your team forget a deadline or dependency.
• It allows you to track your project’s progress. With a project timeline, you can track the progress of even the most complex, multi-layered projects. This makes keeping to deadlines and communicating with your client much easier.
• It keeps your team motivated. Working toward and achieving clearly identified milestones is a great incentive for productivity. It instills a sense of consistent accomplishment, resulting in a much more productive and motivated team.
• It reveals potential constraints early on. Have you ever got halfway into a project only to realize you’ve overlooked something important? A project timeline increases project visibility, allowing you to identify constraints like task dependencies and scheduling conflicts early in the process.

Despite the many benefits, creating a project timeline can feel overwhelming, especially if the project is complex or has multiple layers. To help you, here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a timeline that increases workplace productivity and facilitates project success.

Step 1: Create a Project Brief

A project brief is used to establish the scope of your project i.e. the key deliverables and essential requirements. Not only does it highlight your final goal, but it ensures everyone involved with the project is clear on its fundamental mission.

Your project brief should be clear and concise, with a statement that outlines the main deliverables. For example, if you were tasked by a SaaS company to rebrand their blog, your project statement might say something like “to redesign and create content for [client’s name] blog by [date]”.

Some other important details you will need to include are:

• Delivery dates
• Constraints
• Costs
• Involved team members

Step 2: Split Your Project Into Smaller Projects

Now you know the scope of your main deliverable, start segmenting it into smaller sub-deliverables. You don’t need to focus on specific tasks just yet; rather, break your project into broad sub-sections or milestones.

To illustrate this, we can use the example from earlier. Rebranding a blog for a SaaS website might include designing a new theme, creating content, and executing testing before the relaunch. These are very different areas of your project that you can separate into sub-sections.

Here’s a simple, visual example of how you might break this project up.

Breaking down your main deliverable into smaller, digestible projects provides you with a clear picture of your overall goal and the actions required to complete it. With this increased visibility, you can form an idea of timeframes, team structure, and task dependencies - more on these things later!

Step 3: Write A To-Do List for Each Sub-Deliverable.

Here’s where we get into the nitty-gritty of your project timeline. Create a to-do list for each sub-deliverable by identifying every executable task that needs to be carried out for you to reach your final goal.

Don’t worry about the order of your tasks just yet. Focus on identifying as many tasks as you can, big or small.

If one of your sub-deliverables was to create a content plan, your list might look a little like this:

• Research trending SaaS topics
• Find the best SaaS SEO agency
• Complete competitor analysis
• Identify relevant categories and tags
• Perform keyword researchBrainstorm content ideas
• Establish tone of voice guidelines
• Create a content calendar

You may find some tasks on your list require breaking down even further. In the above list, ‘‘complete competitor analysis’ is quite a broad assignment. It makes sense to dive a little deeper and identify specific tasks.

Under ‘complete competitor analysis’, you might include:

• Identify top 10 competitors
• Collect basic competitor information (founding year, company size, etc)
• Collect product information and reviews
• Identify website performance metrics
• Create a list of each competitor’s strengths and weaknesses

Step 4: Map Out Your Dependencies

While some tasks can be completed simultaneously, your dependent tasks are the parts of your project that can only be started once a prior task or milestone is completed. For example, you wouldn’t start designing a logo before deciding on a color palette or writing content before completing keyword research for SEO.

Even if the order of things feels obvious to you, you must highlight task dependencies so everyone is aware of what needs to be prioritized. This is even more important if you’re managing a large team or hybrid workplace due to the higher potential of data silos and communication errors, which may happen a lot during a conference call.

So, create a physical visualization of task dependencies for your team members. This could be in the form of a flow chart, diagram, or table - anything that visualizes the order of turn-based tasks.

Step 5: Estimate How Long Each Task Will Take

The next step when creating a project timeline is to establish an estimate of how long each task will take. If you have no other performance metrics to use as a baseline, it’s best practice to consult an expert to gauge reliable timeframes.

Of course, these numbers will never be fully accurate. However, they will provide you and your team with a crucial guideline for prioritization and productivity purposes.

During the execution of these tasks, time-tracking software is a great way to track in real-time how long it takes employees to complete specific assignments. It also automatically stores this data for later analysis, providing you with clearer baselines for your next project.

Source：image 3

Step 6: Identify Your Resource Availability

Naturally, you want to ensure you have the best project management software and timeline tools to get started. However, you mustn’t overlook the availability of your most valuable resource - your employees.

If your employees’ availability isn’t taken into account during the planning stage, it can result in time-constricting scheduling conflicts that wreak havoc on delivery. It could also impact the success of any other projects your employees are working on simultaneously.

Always double-check your employees’ schedules when you’re creating your project timeline to boost workforce optimization. Also, ensure they have access to all the materials and tools they’ll need.

And Finally, Put It All Together! Now it’s time to put everything together and finalize your project timeline. Of course, you want this to be as comprehensive as possible, but it also needs to be simple enough to avoid any confusion.

Create your project timeline in an organized, linear fashion with color codes, labels, and dates. Collaborate with your team members to ensure the document is easy to follow and everybody understands their allocated tasks.

Also, make sure your project timeline software is agile enough to support any changes you might need to make further down the line.

This step-by-step guide to creating a project timeline contains all the actionable knowledge you need to step up your project management game. Increase your workplace productivity and chances of project success by combining your project management tools with employee monitoring software too.

Need more help? Check out the Zentao blog. They have more articles on project management, software management, building cross-functional teams, and so much more.

--

Author bio :

Jessica Day - Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications platform that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning local international calling easier and turning them into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. Here is her LinkedIn.