How to Create a Project Timeline: 10 Templates & Examples (2024)

If you want to nail your project management and blaze through your tasks with flying colors, you should create a timelineto help you prepare everything in advance.

This popular type of project management chart will help you clarify the tasks involved in the project, who you will assign to each, and when they should complete it. This way, you won’t run behind schedule and not know what to do next in the middle of the project.

To help you prepare properly, we recommend using a project timeline.

This post covers what a project timeline is, why it’s essential, and how you can write one for your project. It also features timeline templates that you can use to build one.

Table of Contents

What Is A Project Timeline?

How Do You Write A Timeline For A Project?

Types of Project Timelines

10 Project Timeline Templates to Download

Create a Project Timeline With Visme

What Is A Project Timeline?

A project timeline is a visual management tool, including the tasks to be completed listed in a particular order.

Each task includes dates, duration, task dependencies, and other information to help the assigned people complete it properly and on time.

A project timeline’s goal is to help the project manager and members keep track of their progress and keep everyone accountable. As a result, people become more willing to collaborate with the team to get things done and progress further with the project.

Its visual presentation also allows people to process the information faster and easier at a glance. This is crucial for projects with task dependencies where completing tasks enables your project team to move on to the next task.

A timeline helps project managers equally distribute responsibilities across team members. This way, nobody will be assigned more project tasks than the others.

How Do You Write A Timeline For A Project?

Step 1: Know What Your Project is About

To make a timeline, begin with brainstorming for your project scope. It should mention your project’s objectives and why you must achieve them. Establishing a deadline for the project is also important so you can organize the tasks for later.

At this point in the process, you won't have to identify each task in your project scope yet. But at the very least, you should list down the resources you need and the team members you plan on bringing on board. These should give you an idea of how you plan on completing the project.

Step 2: Break Down Project Goals Into Milestones

From your objectives, break down the project into its different milestones.

For example, if you’re running an SEO campaign for a client, you may need to perform keyword research, build a content strategy, and build backlinks.

Then, turn each deliverable into a milestone that your team must complete and show to clients and stakeholders. This allows you to show transparency in your work and enables third parties to play an active part in building the project.

Here's a project milestones templates to help you get started defining your milestones.

Step 3: Divide Milestone Into Tasks

To help you successfully reach your project milestones, you must break them down even further into bite-sized tasks.

Continuing with our SEO example, you can divide keyword research into the following tasks:

1. Collect as many keyword ideas for your client site as possible.
2. Filter the list to keywords that are easy to rank for (relative to the client site).
3. Identify the search intent of the filtered keywords, i.e., informational, commercial, etc.
4. Group related keywords together to create topic hubs in client sites.

Identifying tasks you must do to achieve all your milestones helps you properly set your expectations for the project.

It also enables you to refine your plan by finding additional resources or personnel to include in the projects.

Step 4: Organize Tasks Into Your Timeline

From here, you must assign the tasks for each milestone in your project timeline.

At this point, you can’t really know for sure how long your team can complete all the tasks.

Some milestones have tasks with timelines that are easy to predict because you control all the variables. For example, all you need with keyword research is somebody on your team with enough experience to conduct the research.

But tasks that require intervention and approval from third parties, such as link building, are much harder to predict. You won’t know whether the other parties will respond on time, no matter how many you reach out to them.

Nonetheless, consider all these variables in your project planning to accurately set up the time required to complete each.

Step 5: Delegate Tasks

Finally, assign the right people who can efficiently complete the tasks.

Be mindful of how many tasks you are delegating to each person. You want to assign equal amounts of work to everybody in your team so as not to overload one team member.

It's easy to delegate and collaborate with your team in Visme. Leave comments and assign tasks to ensure everyone on your team is in synch with the timeline for your project.

Types of Project Timelines

There are different types of project management charts you can use, each of which has its own pros and cons.

Your choice of project timeline depends on how you want to manage your project’s progress and what you’re measuring.

Below are three of the most popular, which are also available as infographic templates at Visme:

Gantt Chart

Gantt chart is arguably the most popular project timeline type used by teams. It displays information about the project deliverables, tasks, and dependencies horizontally.

There are tools out there that allow teams to edit the chart on the fly. So, when somebody completes a task, they can mark it off their list and escalate it to the manager for review.

On the downside, a Gantt chart doesn't make identifying which tasks to prioritize first easy.

Calendar or Chronological

As the name suggests, this project schedule type gives you a visual timeline of the project over a period.

The chart’s x-axis (horizontal plane) shows you the date from when it started to when it’ll end. Its y-axis (vertical) lists the milestones and their tasks to be completed during a set period.

The chronological chart details when the project tasks are supposed to be done. It focuses little on the minute details of the project.

Vertical Chart

Unlike the project timeline examples above, the vertical bar chart deals with the data gathered from your project or campaign results.

The x-axis shows you the dates or periods in time, i.e., weekly or monthly, while the y-axis shows you the project data.

Using the data visualization from this chart, you can monitor whether or not you reached your milestones over time, whether it’s to increase your site’s traffic or revenue.

PERT Chart

PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Project managers employ this comprehensive chart type to manage large projects and monitor individual team member performance.

Advantages of a PERT chart include analyzing each activity in-depth and identifying possibilities for each. Regarding the latter, this allows managers to cover things that could happen during the project and have the necessary solutions for each.

If your project doesn't require an exhaustive overview, you're better off using a different project timeline type.

10 Project Timeline Templates to Download

Instead of creating any of the project timeline types above from scratch, use a project timeline template instead.

1. Website Design Project Timeline

Plan your website design project ahead of time by identifying the milestones and their respective tasks.

2. Product Launch Mind Map Template

If you have a product idea but don't know where to start with it, this mind map template should help you brainstorm with your team on how to launch your product and what to do post-launch.

3. Daily Project Gantt Chart Template

Using the Gantt chart, you can break down your project tasks by assigning them to which days of the week they need to be completed. This way, everybody in the project knows what tasks they must attend to on that day.

4. New System Implementation - PERT Chart Template

For managers implementing a brand new system to their process, this PERT chart is ideal for them. It details the task workflow, the duration of each, and the people assigned to it.

5. Launch an Online Store Timeline - Infographic Template

The key to a successful online store is to launch it properly, which is what this infographic template aims to achieve. List down all the things your team needs to do to ensure that the store is up and running on your launch date.

6. 3-Month Project Timeline

For teams running a quick 3-month campaign for a project, this template is for you. List down the different tasks your team has to complete the project and assign them to their most relevant dates.

Then outline the tasks in a visual way and post the timeline for all to see. This way, they get to keep their eye on the prize and motivate them to finish all the tasks promptly.

7. Launch a Business Timeline

Launching a business involves lots of moving parts, most of which you’ll miss out on if you don’t use a project timeline like this template.

Customize the infographic to include more tasks for you and your team to do before the launch. Also include the dates of completion for each job to keep your team in line and on their toes. Doing so ensures that you cover all your bases and get your business off to a good start.

8. Online Course Project Process Infographic Template

Selling online courses is a very lucrative business, especially if you have the skills and knowledge in your field.

So, to help you effectively monetize the years of experience you gathered from practicing your craft, you must use this project process template.

List down the step-by-step process of things you must do to prepare and gather the materials needed to record and produce your course. This allows you to look at the project from a bird’s eye view so you can complete each task until you arrive at the finished product.

9. Promotional Campaign Gantt Chart - Infographic Template

One of the best ways to get the most out of your content is to promote them ruthlessly. At the same time, you need to promote each piece and maximize its impact on your audience. This template will help you achieve that.

10. Project Breakdown Burndown Chart Template

Once you’ve concluded your product or campaign, you want to see the results of your efforts. This simple burndown chart template should help you visualize how your campaign progressed in line graph format.

Depending on the metrics you’ll measure here, you want to see the line trend positively, whether going up or down. From here, you can draw insights on how you can improve your team’s performance on your upcoming projects.

Create a Project Timeline With Visme

No matter how big or small your project is, a timeline helps your team collaborate better, stay updated with the responsibilities, and become more accountable for their tasks.

As a result, you can submit project deliverables without problems and on time.

Feel free to use the free and paid project timeline templates at Visme.

Its drag-and-drop builder and extensive media assets (icons, stock photos, video backgrounds, and more) make creating timelines easy, even if you don’t have any design experience.

Once you finish editing the timeline, you can integrate it with your Powerpoint presentation, download a PPT or PDF version of it, or share a link with your audience so they can view it online.

Whether you want to use one of our project timeline templates or create one from scratch—or other presentations for that matter— Visme’s timeline maker provides all the tools you need to design one that suits your needs.

Get started making a timeline with your team and have fun!