Project Management: Show Milestones in a Timeline [Part 3 of 6]

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This is the third installment of project management using excel series.

Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts
Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools
Part 3: Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones
Time sheets and Resource management
Issue Trackers & Risk Management
Project Status Reporting – Dashboard
Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project Progress

Why Create Project Timeline Chart?

There are 2 key elements in all the successful projects I have been part of.

  • They had exceptional individuals who are also exceptional team players
  • The communication and collaboration is really good.

While there is little that project management software can do when it comes to first point, the second point can be addressed by using right tools and visualizations. In this installment and the part 5 and 6 of this series, we will learn some excel based visualizations / charts that can help you to communicate about the project status and progress to your team and stake holders.

Project milestones can be shown in a simple time line chart in excel. While the chart doesn’t look complicated, it can provide good amount of information on project progress in a simple and understandable chart.

We will learn to create a project milestone chart like this:
Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones

Steps to create a project milestone chart in excel

  1. In order to create a project milestone chart, we need to have the milestone data. The simplest format for milestone data is Date and the milestone. But since our chart requires the milestone to be displayed at a certain height on the chart, we will add the third column – height.
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Data for the chart
    PS: the height column can be easily calculated using formulas. I leave it to your imagination.
  2. Once you have the data in the above format, we will add 2 more helper columns – named DUMMY and Milestone. The Dummy column is used to create the timeline (where Y axis value is zero). The milestone column is a more cleaned up version of milestones (see how it is showing #NA where the milestone is blank.)
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Helper Data for the chart
  3. Now, select the date and dummy columns and insert a line chart.
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Add a line chart
  4. To this chart, we will add one more data series – Height column.
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Add another series
  5. Now select the height data series and change the chart type to a bar chart. Also set the height series to be plotted on secondary axis. Learn more about combining 2 chart types and adding secondary axis in excel.
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Change data series chart type
  6. We will also set the horizontal / axis labels for the height series as the “milestones”. We need to do this so that when we set the data labels for the height series, we will see the milestone instead of month.
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Change horizontal labels - data series
  7. At this point our chart should look like this:
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Chart looks like this now
  8. Now, we will add data labels to the height series. Set the label type as “category”
  9. We will also add error bars to the height series (the bar chart). We will configure the error bar in such a way that they are shown 100% on the negative side only.
  10. After doing this, the chart should look like this:
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones - Add error bars and data labels
  11. Finally we will do some formatting like,
    1. Removing fill color / line from height series by setting them to None / transparent.
    2. Changing the error bar color to a dull shade of gray.
    3. Adding chart title and aligning it.
    4. Removing vertical axes and gridlines.
    5. Formatting horizontal axis – changing label orientation, removing tick marks.

    After all this is done, our project milestone time line chart should look like this:
    Project Status Reporting - Show Timeline of Milestones

  12. That is all, we now have a cool looking project milestone chart ready. Now go and achieve a milestone.

Download the Project Milestones Time Line chart template:

I am sure you are overwhelmed reading the above tutorial. You are probably thinking if it is easier to work towards the project milestones than creating this chart. Well, don’t worry. You can download the time line chart template and play with it to suit your needs.

Download 24 Project Management Templates for Excel

What next?

Project timelines are a great way to tell the story of project to strangers and new people joining your project. They are a good addition to project status meetings and reports.

In the next installment of this series, we will learn how to use Excel to manage timesheets and resources.

If you are new, please read the first 2 parts of this series: Project planning using gantt charts, Tracking day to day project progress with team todo lists.

Your thoughts and suggestions?

What are your ideas on communicating project progress to stakeholders and new comers? What do you think about this tutorial? Please share through comments.

Project Management Templates for Excel

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28 Responses to “Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools using Excel [Part 2 of 6]”

  1. [...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Part 3: Preparing a project time line [upcoming] Part 4: Time sheets and Resource management [...]

    • Jacobus says:

      the templates are great (I bought the combo).
      What I'm missing is a way to have the project gantt chart and reporting with the data per resource, in such a way that I can also show the occupation per resource on an extended gantt chart.

      So with hours entered per person per project or sub-activity, to show a gantt chart of how many hours/days a person spent on which project (or plans to spend).

  2. [...] from: Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools using Excel [Part 2 of 6] 25 Jun 09 | [...]

  3. ross says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Funny I have a post on the value of MS project lined up which I will post when the current monster project I'm working on finishes and I get some free time!

    I'm not sure this would help with any of the projects I've worked on, closing down a to do list seems like more effort than it's worth, but it might be useful for some things. I guessing it doesn't, but does the time stamp not update when you recalculate the work book?

    keep up the good work!
    Ross

  4. Chandoo says:

    @Ross.. Thanks for sharing your ideas... I think to do lists are a great way to keep up with project activities and ensure accountability from individual team members, when they are implemented right.

    "I guessing it doesn’t, but does the time stamp not update when you recalculate the work book?"

    Your guess is right. When you change the calculation mode to "iterative", excel takes care of the nittygritties and retains older values in circular references in formulas.

  5. [...] Project Management in Excel [New Series] - Gantt Charts | To Do Lists [...]

  6. [...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting - Create a Timeline to display milestones Part 4: Time sheets and Resource [...]

  7. Tam says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    The template give me lot of convenience to monitor the thing to do. It simple. Thank You

  8. [...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting - Create a Timeline to display milestones Part 4: Time sheets and Resource [...]

  9. [...] make sure you have read the first 4 parts of the series - Making gantt charts [project planning], team todo lists [project tracking], project time lines chart [reporting] and Timesheets and Resource Management using Excel. Also [...]

  10. Brian says:

    Chandoo,

    I really do not see any befit to this function in Excel unless it was somehow tied into some other chart. That is say a scheduled activities % complete is based on the to-do list.

    The only way this chart would be useful is if no one was assigned none dependent task that could be done by anyone. The cases were both of these conditions are true are so few and far between it really makes this chart worthless.

  11. Chandoo says:

    @Brian... Once you have a todo list up and running, it is easy to get metrics out of it. I didnt propose it as it might look a bit too micro-management-ish.

    I am able to understand what you meant by "The only way this chart would be useful is if no one was assigned none dependent task that could be done by anyone. The cases were both of these conditions are true are so few and far between it really makes this chart worthless."

    Can you explain?

  12. Brian says:

    "Chandoo"

    What I mean is this. Lets say you have 10 task which are part of one activity/WBS that is in your schedule. One there are very few cases were many people would be assigned to complete this one scheduled activity with no direction being given who should what of the 10 task. It is poor management, and the task 90% of the time would not get done in a timely manner if say 4 people were responsible. Secondly, you are assuming all 10 task are independent of each other. You might need to do task 1 thru 3 before you can do task 4, and to do task 7 you might need to do 4 and 6. Thirdly, the time it would take to compile and then fill out the to-do-list even in limited applications is really not worth it.
    I just see almost no applications why a team would need to inform others separate from the schedule that they have completed a task on a to-do list unless anyone of the 4 people could of completed that task.

    My point is, there might be a few very limited applications for this type of list but this list would be worthless as a Project Management tool in every other case.

    However, change this from a to-do-list to a document change log and it is perfect. Instead of to-do it is the documents name or summary of what changed in the document. The person is who edited the document, and the time stamp is when they checked it in. But I do not know why you would use excel when there is free software you can use commercially that is 10 times better that does document management.

    I think using excel to do Project Management over a real Project Management application is a bad idea. Unless you are running a very small, simple project, the time and effort is a lot more to use excel compared to the cost of the Project Management software.

    This comes back to my point, I love your site, however, just because you can do something in excel does not mean you should do it. To often the time it takes to use excel is wasted 10 times over from the cost of doing it in an application designed to for the specific application.

  13. Chandoo says:

    @Brian: The todo list mentioned here is meant to keep track of all the tasks for which detailed planning is not necessary but some sort of tracking is needed. These are not be confused with project activities (a la gantt chart).

    I like your suggestion about using this as a document tracker. Pretty cool use.

    Coming to your point about excel as a real project management tool, well, I have my views, but in a serious project environment, it would surely payoff to have a dedicated project management application.

  14. [...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones Time sheets and Resource [...]

  15. Somnath says:

    Chandoo,

    Wonder how the timestamp column will maintain its previous data. Both Today() and Now() functions will update as and when the next timestamp happens.

  16. [...] Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Part2: Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools Part3: Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones Part4: Time sheets and [...]

  17. Tate says:

    I've combined this with the issue tracker since I like the automatic date stamp, but one thing I'm noticing is that I can't replicate the chart that goes along with the issue tracker because the cells that are referenced have the formula that inserts the time stamp instead of a the actual date value. All the dates of the last 30 days display 0 when they should have a value.

    Is there a way around this?

  18. Mitch says:

    I have edited the chart so that my team members can update the percentage completion of the assigned tasks. When the cell is updated, i would like the time stamp to update. How would I manipulate the formula to update whenever the drop-down list is changed?

  19. Excel is great however sometimes you need to get a better idea of what tasks each person on your team is working on at any given time. We've developed a web app that can do just that! Each person has a list of tasks, listed in the order they have to complete them.

  20. Yukti Kumar says:

    HII,

    I want to expand the database through excel where i am working on 11 cities as of now and i want to expand it upto 50 cities and hence forth the data related to it will also expand so i want to make it precise where i can get updates also that this work is required to be done at that particular day or date

  21. BudB says:

    Thanks for making all of this information available for free. I am currently using excel to track everything for the first time. I later plan to output our information here with a more visual presentation. Wish me luck!

  22. Learner says:

    Can some one point me out to some additional direction on the "Who Finished it?" column? Something more 'basic' for a newbie excel guy? lol I got everything else working on this tutorial but that column. I can't seem to recreate it and I know a lot of it is due to lack of knowledge with VB code. I'd like to recreate this column very much 🙁

  23. Nishad says:

    Dear Chandoo,
    Thanks for the team to do list, kindly let me know how to set the column who " finished it " from another work sheet

  24. Srihari says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Unable to download it - can you please check the link and confirm.

  25. Aryona says:

    Great inhisgt! That's the answer we've been looking for.

  26. Tushar Kacha says:

    Hi Team,

    I know u all are the best programmers in the world!!! that's I am here to rectify my issues. here is my question please ans me as soon as possible before 8-3-2017 its really urgent.

    I have a project named the production tracker.

    1) I require the user form which shows the names of the Associates which are linked to the different tracks. when the user is selected the particular track related details and dropdowns should appear.

    2) I need to track the associate needs how much of the time to complete the particular task. with start stop and pause and resume timer.

    3) It should display the daily count of the production and save the data to the another Excel file.

    this production tracker should save all the data no matter how many people logs in into it.

    Please help me for this it will be very appreciated.

    you can directly email me on my mail ID: tusharkch694@gmail.com

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