Project managers play rewarding but very demanding roles. The job often requires you to become a master of tasks because there’s a lot of ground to cover – scheduling, budgeting, task delegation, resource planning, tracking results, performance assessment, the list goes on.
Managing a project is no easy feat. Fortunately, today’s project managers no longer have to do things the traditional way. The days of post-it notes, notebooks, and mountains of paperwork are long over. Project managers now have plenty of tools to help make their jobs easier to handle.
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A Collection of Excel Templates for Project Management
Whether you’re a seasoned project manager or someone who’s new to the role, using project management templates can significantly lighten your workload. Excel plays a big role in many industries and can be a reliable tool for making critical decisions and ensuring that projects run as smoothly as possible from start to finish.
Here are some Excel project management templates that we think you’ll find very useful.
1. Gantt Chart Template
Gantt charts are a must-have for project managers who value details. Using a Gantt Chart will make it easier for managers and their teams to visualize task schedules and their dependencies throughout the timeline of the project.
Building a Gantt Chart from the ground up can be complicated. The good news is: you don’t have to. Smartsheet has a Gantt Chart Template that’s perfect for handling small to mid-sized projects.
The sheet is already divided into categories that you can customize as necessary. Basically, all that’s left for you to do is input the project details and you’re good to go!
2. Status Report Template
As the project manager, you have to keep an eye on your team’s progress (or lack of it) at all times. Your role demands that you always know where things are at present. Otherwise, things can unexpectedly go wrong and put you in a bad light.
With these Status Report Templates from ExcelTemplates, staying on top of things will be a breeze. You can use the templates to generate project schedule metrics and gauge where your team currently stands at a glance.
Choose between weekly, monthly, and quarterly status report templates and use them to effectively deliver presentations and communicate information about the project to stakeholders and team members alike.
3. Issue Tracker Template
Projects don’t always go as planned. Many times, you will encounter hitches and delays along the way. To minimize the impacts of unexpected problems to your overall productivity, every project manager needs a tool that will allow them to identify and resolve issues almost immediately.
Another one from ProjectManager, the Issue Tracker Template would be a great addition to your collection of Excel-based project management templates. You’ll find it very useful for documenting issues in the project and correcting them as they arise.
The next time the same issue or a new one comes up; your team will have an idea how to handle the problem and fix them before they cause more damage.
4. Project Budget Template
Even the most carefully-planned projects fail in the absence of a sound budgeting strategy. The budget is one of the most essential components of a project, and you’ll need the right tools to ensure that the funds are handled and allocated properly.
Vertex42 has a vast collection of versatile Excel Budget Templates to help project managers predict and manage the financial side of things. Regardless of industry or the scale of the project you’re working, these budget templates will allow you to create detailed costings and fund allocations with the greatest of ease.
5. Work Breakdown Structure Template
Projects are made up of deliverables, further broken down into tasks and subtasks. Oftentimes, there are simply too many tasks involved in a project, causing confusion and inefficiency when not handled properly. To avoid this, you need to create a work breakdown structure, which is basically a hierarchical rundown of tasks based mostly on interdependencies and how important they are to the project.
If you don’t have a go-to Work Breakdown Structure Template yet, try the one from ProjectManager. Using a WBS template will give you a clearer perspective of the entire project scope and help you determine the tasks you need to prioritize at various stages of the project.
6. Critical Path Method Template
Project managers may be multitasking experts, but there’s one task that many of them would rather avoid: creating a Critical Path Method. The thing is; a CPM is crucial to successful project management as it helps project managers identify urgent tasks from those that they can afford to delay and accomplish at a later time.
This ready-to-use Critical Path Method Template from Vertex42 will save you from the painstaking task of creating a CPM. While it has significantly less features than advanced CPM software, it’s free and requires almost no learning curve at all – ideal for smaller scale projects!
7. Action Plan Template
Project managers must have a system for leading their team towards successfully completing the goals they’ve set to accomplish. In other words, an action plan.
An action plan provides you with the framework to execute a project in the fastest and most efficient way possible. A well-thought-out action plan helps ensure that all bases are covered, so you can start the project on the right foot and eliminate wasted time.
You do not have to design your own action plan because there’s a pool of them available for download online. From creating schedules and assigning people responsible to allocation resources and everything in between, the Action Plan Template from ExcelTemplates has you covered.
8. Project Management Dashboard
If you like being in total control of your projects, then the PM Dashboard Template is the powerful ally you need. This tool allows you the luxury to track and monitor every aspect of your projects (tasks, schedule, progress, budget, status, etc.) all in one place.
Use the PM Dashboard Template to create charts and graphs for an easy-to-digest view of all your tasks and workload, as well as their designated costs/budget. It’s indeed the perfect tool for staying on top of everything.
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- 8 Must-have Excel Project Management Templates - June 7, 2021
