How to Create a Project Timeline?

Project timeline allows you to schedule your tasks collectively in a project. In this way, you can see when need to complete the tasks. Project timeline acts as a roadmap for you in any project and prevents a project from derailing. Managing a project can be a tough road. Planning and viewing your work on a project timeline is one way to ease your project management. If you don’t plan your project, it’s quite possible to go the wrong way. Project management timelines establish the path you must follow to accomplish the project. Creating a timeline manually can be complicated for you. Today, project management tools make this process easier.

Sometimes it may be asked to complete a project in a short time from you or your team. It is normal to feel under pressure in such situations. You can achieve effective project management by learning how to create project timelines. In this article, we compiled how to create a project timeline for better project management.

What is a project timeline?

Project timeline shows what needs to be completed when starting a new task on a project. Timeline, which is usually in visual form, is a reference point for your team or stakeholders to understand the necessary steps. Having a timeline gives you both efficiency and time management. Shortly, a detailed timeline draws a roadmap for your project that outlines milestones, tasks, dependencies, and deadlines.

What are the benefits of a project timeline?

Project timelines keep the whole project in one place, giving you an overview and idea of progress. It allows everyone involved in the project to follow the visualized project steps and it keeps tasks on track. Timeline draws you a roadmap. It helps you, especially in complex large projects, as multiple steps are required.

Achieving a project can be difficult because there are so many steps to complete in complex projects. A project timeline keeps you focused on the bigger picture by helping you visualize everything. It creates a roadmap and in this way helps people in the project understand what role they have and what they need to do in the project.

It allows everyone to monitor the progress of the project. This creates trust in your stakeholders. It is an important step in project management that people know their roles and responsibilities clearly. A project timeline provides this for you. With the help of project management tools, it gives you a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve and what part of the project you are in.

How to Create a Project Timeline?

Create a project brief

First step you should take when creating a project timeline is to create a project brief. Project brief is a roadmap and explains your project’s purpose, goals, and milestones. It includes details about the project such as potential challenges and estimated deadlines. This brief is as a reference for your stakeholders, investors, or customers who want to get an overview of the project. First, ask these questions:

What are your goals for the project? Which internal and external stakeholders are part of the project? What are their roles? When are the estimated delivery dates? Prepare your project brief by answering these questions. Once you’ve identified your project brief, start taking all the necessary steps to get there and creating a project timeline.

Understand the project scope

Before creating a project timeline, it is very important to know the scope of your project. This way, you can understand how long each task in your project needs, the overall timeline of the project, and how many team members you need. Create a list of potential resources you will need to complete your project and list all the necessary steps to successfully complete your project. You should break these steps down into small manageable tasks later on. For example, if your project goal is to create a client’s website, you can divide this step into several smaller tasks.

Create to-do lists

Once you understand the scope of the project, make a list of everything involved in the project. All tasks required to successfully complete your project on time should be included in this list. Break longer and complex tasks into easy subtasks. In that way, you can deal with these tasks faster. Thanks to the list you create, your team can clearly see their roles in the project and get real-time reporting. Break milestones into tasks and keep lines of communication open at all times. Thus, you can make your team a part of the project process. Your team can be fully engaged and successful if they know what they have to do to complete each task.

Create a to-do list with PeerBie in a digital place. With PeerBie, you can create a to-do list for your project and assign tasks to anyone you want. You can add images, locations, and files to these tasks, and specify the necessary explanations. All you have to do is create a task, add the deadline, and assign it to the person who is responsible! In addition, you can quickly access performance reports prepared according to the tasks they have completed.

Determine dependencies between tasks

Before starting a project, it is very important to identify potential dependencies. You can avoid the accumulated workload by doing this. A certain action must be completed before starting some tasks. By identifying these dependencies, you should prepare a project timeline. You can avoid problems by assigning early who is responsible for each step of the project and setting deadlines. In this way, you can avoid delays that may arise in the project.

Choose your project timeline software

You can track your project timeline manually, but you can make your work easier by adding it to software that is updated in real-time. Project management software PeerBie helps you avoid conflicting tasks and brings everyone involved in the project together in one place. By gathering all team members in a single place, you can maintain communication effectively through PeerBie. Create a to-do list for your project, assign tasks to relevant employees, set deadlines, and communicate without interruption.