What is a Timeline
A timeline is a visual depiction of events that can be used to better understand history, a tale, a process, or any other type of event sequence that is grouped in chronological order and displayed along a line (usually drawn left to right or top to bottom).
It describes what happened during a specific time period or to a specific individual, beginning with the oldest incident and progressing through time. For a better presentation, timelines are increasingly being portrayed in infographics that combine text and graphic imagery.
A timeline is useful for documenting any form of growth, presenting an easy-to-understand history and assisting readers in swiftly understanding the past and ongoing.
Whether your project is simple or large, a handy and practical timeline is essential for high-level planning and scheduling.
A project timeline guarantees that your project is well-planned and transparent. It assists managers in predicting bottlenecks and streamlining workflows.
Do you want to know how to make an effective project timeline? This post will teach you the fundamentals of timeline creation as well as provide you with some vivid examples and essential tools.
What is a Project timeline
A project timeline is a list of events in chronological sequence. In most cases, it is a line containing dates, events, or essential tasks that provides teams with an overview of their work at a glance, keeping everyone on track at all times.
It is critical to have sufficient professional abilities to create an appropriate timeline. It displays which phases are already completed, which are in progress, and which are scheduled to be completed. It suggests that staying on schedule with initiatives is beneficial.
Elements of a Project timeline
Timelines can have different features depending on your needs and preferences. However, there are some standard components that they should always include:
-
- Tasks that must be completed
- Task beginning and ending dates
- Task completion time.
- Task interdependence
Steps to create a Project timeline
You can create a timeline fully from scratch or use a pre made template. You can make necessary changes in the fully editable timeline slides. If you plan to create the timeline then follow these steps:-
1) Prepare a project scope statement
Determining the scope of your project is another step in the project management process that must be completed before you can build your project timeline. A project scope statement specifies the deliverables you want to produce by the end of a project.
2) Write a Work Breakdown Statement (WBS)
Begin with your scope statement and reduce your deliverable or deliverables into smaller sections to develop a work breakdown structure (WBS). You’re not yet into tasks, simply smaller deliverables. This part is also known as the scope baseline, and each sub-deliverable is referred to as a work package.
3) Work packages should be separated to individual tasks
You may now create a to-do list for each work package. Consider the difference between your starting point and your desired outcome. What must occur in order to move from the beginning location to the desired end point? Take note of related tasks across work bundles. This procedure will assist you in determining dependencies in the following phase.
4) Determine project dependencies
Dependencies are tasks that cannot begin until another task is finished. You can’t plant tomatoes, for example, until the earth has been tilled. Determining dependencies for a project management timetable will be pretty simple in this instance, but for more complex processes, mapping relationships may give you a few grey hairs.
5) Calculate the total time required for each task.
Return to your job list or dependency chart and estimate how long each task will take to complete. Assume that the relevant party is working on the task carefully and without interruptions. If you are unable to precisely estimate the amount of time required, work on this section with an expert who can provide help.
6) Determine resource availability
The availability of your team members or staff is frequently your limiting resource. In this phase, you must determine when they will be able to devote time to an assigned assignment. Even though it just takes one day of concentrated labour to accomplish a task, you may need to extend the amount of allotted time to a few days or even weeks if there are several other projects going on at the same time.
7) Identify critical junctures
Project milestones enable you to follow the progress of your projects from beginning to end. If you go behind, you will be aware well in advance of your final deadline and will be able to change your plans or expectations to keep on track.
8) Create a project management timeline.
This is the exciting part! It’s time to start planning your project’s timeline. Line up your jobs end to end, change their lengths to fit the amount of time allocated, and then finish with milestones. Voilà! You have finished the project management timetable. Isn’t it lovely?
Conclusion
Project timeline is a highly effective tool that can use to present and evaluate your project’s progress. Make sure that the timeline suits your need and if so select the right type of project timeline for you. There are other Gantt chart diagrams and flowchart diagrams that can be also used.
