I'm not a project manager, I'm just a business owner / marketing director / parent / president' Use a project plan template that lets you keep track of all your tasks, and make sure your universe is the good one. A bar graph at the top of the project plan clearly shows how many tasks each team member is assigned, to make sure no one is being given more work than they can handle.Īvoid the madness. Each task is associated with an initiative, so if the boss suddenly declares a certain initiative top priority, the project plan can be viewed sorted by initiative to see what tasks are now high priority. He types in all relevant and necessary tasks, being sure to include start and end dates as well as any predecessor tasks. Thankfully, in our universe, Stephen has a great project plan template from. Or maybe the final three tasks are all assigned to the same person, who doesn't have enough hours in the day to complete them on time. Maybe tasks aren't clearly identified as being reliant on another task, so when the final week comes and three tasks remain to be split among the team, it turns out that two of them can't even be started until the first one is complete.

Other universes bring other problems caused by the lack of a project plan template. The event still happens, but it feels off. Without being able to track progress on his preparations, he doesn't realize that the stage won't be built in time. He has a mental project plan in his head with a list of tasks, but doesn't have an actual project plan template that tracks progress and completion percentage in addition to start dates and end dates. In another universe, Stephen is responsible for hosting a massive event. When his app launches, nobody knows about it, and by the time he gets advertising in gear, it's too late.

He forgets to launch an advance advertising campaign and establish a social media presence. In one universe, Stephen is launching an app, but doesn't have a project plan to ensure that he has a list of all relevant and necessary tasks in order for the launch to succeed. You might even refer to it as a 'multiverse of madness', because trying to launch a project without a project plan is madness. There are a variety of strange ways his project could play out, and in different universes, he will have different results. Stephen is a project manager who is launching a big project in three months. Task bars are color-coded by status and shaded based on completion percentage, with icons to indicate who is in charge of each task. You can adjust task duration, start dates, and end dates by dragging and resizing task bars. The Gantt timeline chart on the right side puts all of this information into an easy-to-read chart. Initiative - Complex projects may need to be broken down into a set of Initiatives that will each consist of a specific set of tasks. Owner - The main person or people responsible for this task. By planning out task deadlines, you're much more likely to get your project completed by your target dates.ĭuration - Knowing how long you've allotted for each task will give you a benchmark for how far along each task should take.Ĭompletion % - Track progress toward completion of each task. Start Date/ End Date - Part of project management is making sure things get done on time. The RYG column uses a 3-color stoplight system to let you know at a glance which tasks are good to go, which are slowly progressing, and which have critical issues you may need to address. RYG - You may have noticed there are many possible options for a project's status. Status - Whether the task is still in the planning phase, in progress, delayed, on hold, pending review, completed, fully approved, etc. Task - The name of the specific task we're talking about For each task, columns represent the following: The Project Plan spreadsheet lays out all of the tasks required in order for your project to be a success. How does this Project Plan template work?

Project planner templates