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Project plan template
Here’s an image of the tracker template. Download it by clicking on the picture below:
Should you use an Excel project template at all?
To tell you the truth: I almost always use Excel as project tracker. Why? Excel is super-easy to use and you can easily share files with other people. This is what matters.
There’s a common misconception about tools for project management. Many people believe they must use complex software like Microsoft Project. That’s BS. Especially for beginners such tools can be overwhelming. You change one value here and it automatically changes another value there — leading to unwanted changes. Then what happens people get caught up fixing their plan and forget to look after their project.
Excel allows you to draw a project plan the way you want. And anyone can open an Excel template. This makes sharing so much easier. No need for MS Project.
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USING THE PROJECT TEMPLATE
Here’s a brief description of the different sections of the template and what they are used for.
PROJECT PHASES
Phases help structure a project into blocks of related tasks. Usually in a project you will
always have a preparation phase, an implementation phase and a closing phase.
You can use a different row color and uppercase style to highlight project phases, just as I did in the example above.
TIMELINE
The template uses a weekly timeline which is shown from column E to the right. This means one column represents one week. Using a weekly schedule means you have to do less editing if tasks are being moved within a week.
Weeks can be identified easily using calendar weeks. The calendar week system also makes communication easier. For example, you could tell your team: “vendor evaluation will happen in week 6 and 7”. This way people know when to block time for your project. When I also recommend is to enable the week numbers in Outlook.
ACTIVITY NAME
These are the actual things we need to do in our project. For example, there is an activity called requirement specification, where we are putting down the requirements of our project. Also the project kick-off is listed as an activity. In the example, cells showing tasks have yellow background color.
ACTIVITY BARS
The blue cells in the project plan template show tasks on the timeline:
To draw a new activity bar, just select the respective cells and change the cells color. You can also use different colors to highlight groups of activities. For instance you could show admin tasks in grey, conceptual and planning work in brown and the actual doing as green bars.
MILESTONES
A milestone is a goal you are working towards or a very important activity. Examples:
Software fully tested (a goal)
Project status meetings (an important activity)
Go-live of a new software system (an important activity/goal)
Getting approval for something (a goal)
RESPONSIBLE
Once you have finalized your project plan, you share it with your team and the people affected by your project.
Everybody who has some responsibility in the project needs to see with one glance what they have to do. That’s what the columns B, C and D are used for. An X depicts who has to contribute for a specific activity.
How you title the columns and how many columns you use depends on your project. For a project involving IT and marketing, you would have two columns, IT and marketing.