How to Create a Project Timeline: A Practical Guide

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How to Create a Project Timeline: A Practical Guide

Your project timeline is the most vital tool to manage any project successfully. It tells you which tasks are complete and outstanding, and who owns them.

It often includes information about cost and anticipated timeframes, as well.

Also known as a project schedule, a good project timeline is in-depth but easy to interpret. It encourages teamwork without removing accountability. And it streamlines a project manager’s duties without oversimplifying them.

In this video, we will look at:

- What is a project timeline (and what it is not)
- How to create a project timeline in 10 practical steps
- A working example of how to create a project timeline

Let’s begin by defining the main deliverables of any project: project plans, work breakdown structures (WBS), and project timelines.

These are often confused. In fact, they are unique entities, each with their own purpose to enable project success. They also happen to be dependent on each other.

Project plan vs. work breakdown structure vs. project timeline

The project plan is a formal outline of the project goals, stakeholders, scope, responsibilities, and schedule.

That sounds like everything, right?

Well, as you will discover in this article, each of the elements mentioned is substantive. You must break many of them down further into subtasks that may not be relevant to all stakeholders.

Instead, the project plan is a single document for key project figures to refer to when they need the essential overview.

From the project plan, project managers can produce the work breakdown structure (WBS). This is a hierarchical representation of the tasks that teams must complete throughout the project lifecycle. The WBS does not detail how the tasks are completed; just that they are essential for successful project delivery.

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