This template is crucial for day-to-day project operations, remembering tasks, clarifying responsibilities, and monitoring completion rates.įor organizations juggling multiple projects, this template consolidates key information from each project into a single view. It’s a dynamic tool that updates as tasks progress. Project timelines help teams visualize the project’s flow and ensure the timely delivery of key components by presenting the sequence of activities.Ī task list tracks professionals’ tasks, their assignees, due dates, and statuses. It’s a high-level representation focusing on major events or outputs rather than detailed tasks. This template offers a linear view of the project’s significant milestones and their respective deadlines. You can then use the Gantt chart to track the progress of your project and identify any potential problems.Įnroll in our Project Management courses and master the project management templates for faster and Efficient project delivery! To use this template, simply fill in the information for each task. You can also add additional columns for things like priority, resources, and dependencies. This Gantt chart template includes columns for task name, start date, end date, duration, and status. Top 10 Excel Project Management Templates Enhance communication: Templates can help you to communicate more effectively with your team members by providing a shared view of the project data.Increase efficiency: Templates can help you to streamline your project management process and improve efficiency.Improve accuracy: Templates can help you to avoid errors by providing a pre-defined structure for your project data.Save time: Templates can save you a lot of time by eliminating the need to start from scratch with each new project.There are numerous benefits to using a project management excel template, which includes: Benefits of Using an Excel Project Management Template They can be used to manage projects of all types, including software development projects, marketing projects, and construction projects. Project management templates can be used for a variety of projects, from small personal projects to large enterprise projects. You should also choose a template that is easy to use and understand. When choosing a project management template, it is important to consider the size and complexity of your project, as well as the specific features that you need. Templates typically include features such as task lists, timelines, budgets, and risk assessments. What Is a Project Management Template?Ī project management template is a pre-made spreadsheet or document that you can use to track and manage your projects. And there are hundreds of free and paid Excel project management templates available online. Excel is a powerful tool that can be used to track tasks, deadlines, budgets, and more. Actual takes this a step further by allowing you to pick different colors for the bars for different tasks.If you’re looking for a simple and affordable way to manage your projects, an Excel project management template can be a great option. The Pro version of the gantt chart that shows Planned vs. Or, you can edit the conditional formatting rules to pick your own texture or color for the bars (Home > Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules). If you want the "Actual" schedule to be shown with the texture pattern instead, you could switch this simply by changing the Plan and Actual labels. That is why I included the Progress Bar inside the Progress column. Planned, it was just too confusing (too many colors and formats overlapping). I experimented with showing the % complete inside the bars of the gantt chart, but when showing Actual vs. This is a technique I wrote about in the blog article " Showing Actual Dates vs. Ultimately what I found was that the simplest technique to understand when viewing the schedule is to use a texture fill for the Plan Schedule which allows it to overlap with the Actual Schedule. I created this project planner primarily to experiment with different ways of showing the Planned vs. If you want to use the Days column but enter the Start and End dates, then you can calculate the Days using a formula: = end_date- start_date+1. The "-1" is included because a task is assumed to begin the morning of a day and end in the evening, such that a 1-day task is represented as having the same Start and End date. However, it is usually convenient to define the End date by entering the duration in Days, so you can use a formula for the End Date such as = start_date+ days-1. The gantt chart in this project planner spreadsheet relies only on the Start and End date columns, so you could delete the Days columns.