In reality, no project manager jokes with a project plan, it is a vital tool in the arsenal of every project manager. Without it, the outcome of a project will be doomed. According to statistics, most organizations record about 70% failure rates in their projects due to the lack of a project plan.
With a project plan, the project team will identify the main goals of the project, be in the know of the actions required to fulfill these goals, and assign the right personnel for every task of the project.
Furthermore, a project plan will assist the project team in guarding against the project from exceeding the desired costs because it enables you to have full control of the project budget.
Also, according to a report of Harvard business review, on the average, most projects exceed their budget by 27% of the intended cost.
In project plan examples, the project management teams always strive to identify the roadmap that will be used to achieve the desired goals and execute the project with the right budgetary provision.
However, the task of creating an effective project plan can be daunting for most project managers but with a simple project plan template excel, you are assured of ease in creating an effective project plan that will aid the smooth execution of your project.
A simple project plan template will simplify the process of designing your project plan and will ensure that you do not miss out on the necessary steps in your project thereby helping you to deliver the right values to your customers.
In this article, we will discuss the simple project plan template excel and how it can contribute to the success of your project.
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Simple project plan template Excel: the role it plays in your project
The use of project plan template excel will help in designing the life cycle for the management of your project in a manner that you and your team can realize the objectives of your project and deliver the desired results at each phase of the project.
Project plan template Excel can be used as a simple project plan template for planning the task of a project to enhance quality delivery to the customers. The following are values that project plan template Excel offers you and your team;
- It is useful for documenting and communicating the expectations of a project. It will control the schedule and delivery. Also, it will identify, calculate and manage the risks in a project to prevent the truncation of the goals of the project.
- It allows you to set the milestones of your project in a proper timeline that you can plan around the anticipated results.
- The project plan template Excel is a model that you can use with ease for planning, visualizing, and sharing the project plan with the relevant stakeholders.
- With a simple project plan template Excel, you can easily understand the scope of your project and break it down into manageable components. Also, it will help you in capturing the timeline of the project’s tasks, each task owner and track the status of each task on a single dashboard.
For instance, project management tools like Sinnaps are designed with different templates that can be used as a simple project plan Template Excel for planning the tasks of your project. They have ease of use feature with the intuitive interface thereby simplifying the process of creating your project plan.
In project management, there could be a need for project managers to modify the plans of their projects to meet certain project needs. Project charter template Excel is all you need to get this done. It will easily modify your project plans and you can also use it to add additional information to your project.
In planning the activities of a project, documentation takes the center stage as it will help in communicating the scope of the project to the relevant stakeholders. The project documentation template offers you a model for documenting the scope, schedules, and resources of your project.
The effectiveness of a project team is further enhanced with the use of Gantt project planner Excel in their projects. It will organize the plans of a project and help in executing the rigorous tasks of the project.
With a project plan chart Excel, you can easily showcase the activities of your project in a bar chart. This enables you to view the status of your project from a glance to aid your project management decisions.
Project plan Excel
A project plan excel offers you and your team an easily downloadable tool that can be used for managing and reporting the status of a project.
A project plan excel comes with an easy-to-use interface that simplifies the process of visualizing, planning, and tracking the progress of a project.
No doubt, effective communication is very important in project management, project plan Excel will promote effective communication among the project team members thereby allowing everyone to be on the same page on the activities of the project.
Furthermore, another feature of project plan Excel is that it can be converted into PowerPoint slides for reporting the progress of the project.
The integration of the project planning schedule Excel enables you to create a project schedule that will adequately leverage your workforce into an effective work schedule that will optimize their skills.
Excel project plan template as a tool can be combined with other tools to enhance your efficiency. One of them is the Excel project plan template with the Gantt chart, this tool is useful for estimating how long a project will take to complete.
It will help you in managing the processes involved in your project thereby assisting you to manage the complexities that could arise in the project. Furthermore, it is useful for managing the risk of a project.
Create a project plan in Excel
You can make use of Excel to create a plan for your project. Below are the steps involved in creating a sample project plan Excel:
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Add a header to the Table
You can do this by leaving the first row of the spreadsheet blank. Then on the second row, input the headers such as tasks, who are responsible, start and end dates and status.
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Add the project information
You can begin with the Task column and input the tasks for your project plan. You can input the number of tasks you wish to have in it. Also here, you can include the tasks in a group or phases. Then enter the name of the person responsible for each task and the start and end dates.
Enter the status of each task such as Complete, In progress, Overdue or Not commenced.
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Add color to convey the project status at a view
You are allowed to change the color of the font by clicking on the cell with the text you want to change.
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Create the project plan timeline: add and format dates.
On the same row as the table header in the next available column, enter the two dates of the project timeline. Then hold down shift, choose the two dates and drag the bottom right-hand corner across the row until you get to the end date. Download a Timeline Template in Excel for free.
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Add final touches
To add grid lines to the project plan, select the whole project plan, these include both the table and the timeline. On the Font group, click the border icon.
Then select all the borders. Again, If you desire more project information to be included, choose the first column, right-click and select Insert > Entire row. Repeat until you have empty rows
Then in the first column, enter the following; project name, project manager, project deliverables, start date, end date, and overall progress. Then fill in the corresponding information.
A | B | C | D | E | F |
Task | Owner | Start | End | Duration(days) | Status |
Setting of kick-off meeting | Mr. Daniel | Dec-02 | Dec-03 | 0 | Complete |
Initiation | Mrs. Sarah | Dec-07 | Dec-09 | 2 | Complete |
Development | Mr. Frank | Dec-11 | Dec-15 | 5 | Complete |
Operations | Mr. Adams | Dec-17 | Dec-25 | 9 | In-progress |
Launch | Mrs. Wright | Dec-27 | Dec-27 | 1 | Not started |
A sample project plan template example
Download a Project Plan Template
Website development project plan template Excel
This is an easy-to-use tool that you can use in developing the website of your organization. It offers you a model useful for propagating the goals of your organization to a wider audience on the internet.
Furthermore, the Microsoft Excel project plan template can be used to open, edit and save your project plan in different file formats.