business planning timeline template

How to Create a Business Plan Timeline

Below you will learn what a business plan timeline is and where it belongs in your business plan.  

What is a Business Plan Timeline?

A business plan timeline lays out the key milestones you hope to achieve in your business and when you plan to accomplish them.   

The Importance of a Timeline

In running a business, it is very easy to get caught up in day-to-day activities and putting out fires. When you do this, unfortunately, it’s hard to grow your business. Having a timeline that lists your key goals forces you to spend time each day, week, and month to work on key growth initiatives.

Also, if you are seeking funding, investors and lenders need to understand these milestones and your projected dates for accomplishing them. This helps give them confidence that you will successfully execute your plan. 

Also, having a timeline helps you better prioritize your time and hire the right people at the right time.

    Finish Your Business Plan Today!

Where does the timeline go in the business plan.

The timeline belongs primarily in the Operations Plan of your business plan, however, you may include some highlights within the Executive Summary as well. 

Using the established key milestones you have created, you will now assign a timeframe to those milestones to show when you expect to reach each milestone. Remember, use historical data and be realistic in your timeline so that you can meet these goals.  

What Should Be Included in the Timeline?

Your business is currently at point A. Where you want to go is to point B. Now getting from point A to point B requires you to complete milestones.

And the most important ones are what I call “risk-mitigating milestones.” These are the milestones that help eliminate the risk of your company failing.

Some examples of “risk mitigating milestones” may include:

• Finding a location for your business, store, warehouse, etc.
• Getting the permits and licenses
• Building the facility/store
• Hiring and training staff
• New products and services introductions
• Store opening date
• Key employee hires
• Revenue milestones (date when sales exceed $X, when sales exceed $Y, etc.)
• Key partnerships executed
• Key customer contracts secured
• Key financial events (future funding rounds, IPO, etc.)

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, it is your job to identify your risk-mitigating milestones and prioritize them so that you can take steps each day toward the larger business goals.  

How to Create & Prioritize Your Milestone List

Create your detailed risk-mitigating milestone list first. The goal should be to list approximately six major milestones in the next year, five milestones in the following year, and so on for up to five years (so include two in year 5). 

You can use this as a “To Do” list and ensure you achieve your goals each day, week, and month, further developing your business strategy.

Next to each milestone, include the expected timeframe, due date, and the budget you will need to attain them. For example, you may want to launch a billboard marketing campaign over a 6-month period (Expected Due Date: 6/30/2022), and the expected cost is $18,000.

After you create your milestone list, you need to prioritize them. Decide on which milestones you should achieve with the initial funding if needed. Ideally, these will get you to the point where you are generating revenues or profits. This is because the ability to generate revenues significantly reduces the risk of your venture; as it proves to lenders and investors that customers want the products and/or services you are offering.

By setting up your milestones, you will figure out what you can accomplish for less money. And the fact is, the less money you need to raise, the easier it generally is to raise it (mainly because the easiest to raise money sources offer lower dollar amounts).  

How to Develop a Timeline For Your Business Plan

You’ve already completed the hard part. 

Now, it’s time to schedule your milestone list and convert it into a timeline format to give you a quick visual reference. Be sure that your timeline includes all the milestones that you’ve deemed a priority.

There are many businesses that prefer to develop Gantt charts, while others may prefer a calendar, Excel sheet, or another preferred format. Choose the format that works best for you.

There are several format options and platforms to choose from if you do a quick search for “ create a timeline online .” However, keep in mind that it’s not how pretty the timeline is, it’s about functionality and the ease of use to track the progress of all the tasks completed. 

Here are a couple of options:

Source: SlideTeam

This one-page timeline is a downloadable template that is clean and easy to read and follow. While it doesn’t have all the details on this one page, it has enough information to help business leaders understand if the team is on track.

Source: Office Timeline

This is a PowerPoint Presentation add-in that allows you to create a custom Gantt chart with your Microsoft Office account. While the chart above says a 5-year plan, note that they did not include the parts of the milestones beyond Year 1. This may be to reduce clutter and keep focused on the near-future goals. 

Source: GanttPro

This Gantt chart online platform offers another alternative allowing you to assign tasks to others on your team and monitor their progress all in one place. It also tracks the time to complete each task so that you can better schedule in the future for similar projects.

These are only a few of the platforms available online to create an amazing timeline for your business plan. In the beginning, it may be a lot of work to set up, but once you obtain the funding you are seeking, it’ll be well worth the time and effort.

By creating a timeline as early as possible in the business planning process, you can begin to establish realistic goals that can help improve day-to-day decision-making and boost confidence among current and potential stakeholders.

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Top 5 Business Plan Timeline Template with Samples and Examples

Vaishali Rai

US statesman Benjamin Franklin has given the world this timeless piece of wisdom, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” 

Yet, many entrepreneurs leap into initiating their business plans without having a solid business timeline. 

Writing a business plan timeline can sound boring, complex, and a waste of time when you're a busy entrepreneur with so much on your plate. However, for many businesses, the timelining phase is a make-or-break step that could save you time, money, resources, and energy in the long run.

Let's talk about what a Business Plan timeline is.

A business plan timeline is a flexible roadmap to the business's accomplished and pending goals. Any startup or new business must use a business plan timeline to track its achievements, milestones, and failures. In simple terms, a business plan timeline is a guide that outlines and tracks the progress of your business to date. It features the effectiveness of business strategies to track productivity, such as digital marketing tasks, market research projects, and organizational operations activities.

You’ve created a strategic business plan — now what? You need some additional planning documents to help map out your long-term strategy by outlining your daily actions. Stay on track with our carefully structured Top 10 Business Operational Plan Templates with Samples and Examples!

Why do you need a business plan timeline template?

The thought of starting a business plan can be an exciting time. No matter how excited you are to start with your great idea, it pays to slow down and create a timeline that will help determine loopholes in your plan and identify structural weaknesses of your business at an early stage. A good timeline template presents a road map to structure, operate, and grow your business. Competitors are waiting to outshine, even ambush, you. Thus, a business plan timeline template helps identify your company's core strengths using a balanced combination of logic and strategy.

From business analysis to financial projections, our thoughtfully-designed business plan timeline templates will set benchmarks, proactively align your team around a shared objective, and help avoid getting off track.

The 100% customizable nature of the our business plan ppt templates provides you with the desired flexibility to edit your presentations. The content ready slides give you the much-needed structure.

Check these out now!

Template 1: 10-Day Timeline Information Technology Marketing Activities Business Planning

Initiating marketing activities with a clear plan leads to consistent achievements. Use this 100% customized 10-Day Timeline Information Technology Marketing Activities template to present your data in a clear, easy-to-understand format. The template includes 11 slides, including a 10-day timeline, information, technology, marketing, and activities.

Download Now!

Template 2: 3-year Planning Timeline Business Plan Achievement Innovation Development

Keep your audience glued to seats with this professionally designed 3-year planning timeline Template. The template revolves around a new product innovation timeline, including innovation, transformation, strengths, weaknesses, efficiency, and effectiveness of a product. This deck comprises ten slides with creative visuals and well-researched content with appropriate layouts, diagrams, graphs, icons, charts, etc.

Template 3: Three-month Business Planning Timeline

A business plan is a set of actions or processes that describe how an organization plans and runs. This three-month Business Planning Timeline helps you demonstrate business plans essential for an organization to grow and accomplish its goals. The template helps in discussing approaches, techniques, tips, strategies, tools, and processes available with your team to achieve a target.

Template 4: Monthly Business Plan Animation Timeline

Guide your team about theories and methods of the sales planning and selling with this impressive Monthly Business Plan Animation Timeline Template. Clearly share your organization's vision, mission, and milestones timeline with your team. Get an overview of the specific market segments which your organization is targeting. It also helps identify the areas for improvement, failures, and weaknesses.

Template 5: Business Plan Executive Summary Company Timeline

A company's executive summary is like the back cover of your book. Capture and hold interest with this well-crafted and engaging business plan executive summary company timeline template that can effectively display the organization's policy, description, financial information, project fund investment, and market analysis. The template helps decision-makers get the gist of the entire project with just a flip through the executive summary.

THE TEST OF TIME

Multiple business plans come and go, but a business timeline has always stood the test of time. A business timeline is more than a bunch of numbers, scribbles, and buzzwords. It is a visual walkthrough of your business's journey and a roadmap to achieve key milestones while remaining useful and valued among competitors. Creating certainty, clarity, and consistency are the three foundations of a winning business plan template.

Don't wait! Grab your favorite business plan timeline template from the above set, prioritize your time better, and hire the right people at the right time for the right role.

FAQs on Business Plan Timeline

What is a timeline in a business plan.

The timeline is primarily a part of the Operations Plan of your business. However, you can also incorporate some key highlights from the timeline in the executive summary. 

A business plan timeline refers to a timeframe assigned against the established key milestones to show the expected duration to reach each of them. Your business plan timeline depends on historical and real-time data for it to be as practical and realistic as possible. An ideal business plan timeline includes the following elements:

• Where do you want to reach?
• When do you want to reach?
• How do you want to reach?

How do you write a timeline for a business plan?

First, to create a timeline, schedule your milestone list and put it into a timeline format for a quick visual reference. Make sure milestones are sorted by priority. There are many ways to create a business plan timeline. Some of these are:

• Gantt charts
• Excel sheets

Choose the format that works best for you, depending upon the functionality and the ease of use to track progress of completed tasks. However, you can always use our well-designed and researched business timeline templates to curate yours.

What are the seven steps of a business plan?

A good business plan provides direction to the company, attracts investors, and converts visitors into buyers. 

Now, how do you write a business plan?

• Research : To write the perfect plan, you must intimately know your company, product, competition, and market.
• Determine the purpose of your plan : Your plan is a road map that provides directions, steers the business towards gradual success, and helps avoid any bumps.
• Create a company profile : It displays the history of an organization, the products and services offered, the target market and audience, financial resources, and how you're going to solve a problem.
• Document business aspects : Investors want to ensure your business is profitable. Thus, they do in-detail research about your company. Document everything to help with this process, so you don't miss anything.
• Build a strategic marketing plan : A great business plan must include a strategic marketing plan that demonstrates your marketing activities and efforts.
• Make your plan adaptable based on your target audience : Each reader does have different interests. If you're successfully capturing these interests and data early, you can incorporate them while preparing a business plan for a particular audience.
• Explain why you care : Whether you're sharing your plan with an investor, team member, or a customer. Your plan must confidently present that you're passionate, dedicated, and care about your audience, business, and the plan.

What is a project timeline in a business proposal?

A business plan is just a wish list without a clear picture of what will happen. The best way to ensure the business plan stays aligned with the project requirements is by maintaining a project timeline.

A project timeline lays out the milestones of your business plan, employees' details, organization policy, locations, project fund investment, sales targets, net revenue expected and other targets, and the estimated time it will take to meet these.

A project timeline is a chronological list of plans, tasks, and activities that gives project managers a comprehensive view of the project plan. It is usually created in a template or bar chart, where each activity or task is allocated a name along with its start and end date.

Mainly, a project timeline provides an in-depth overview of the project, including its start date, due date, and task dependencies, if any.

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How to Write the Strategy Plan Timeline (+ Examples)

• March 21, 2024
• Business Plan , How to Write

Creating a strategic plan timeline is crucial, especially if you are preparing a business plan for your business. This comprehensive guide simplifies the process, offering a step-by-step guide to crafting a clear, actionable strategy plan timeline tailored for business owners.

Whether you’re launching a new startup or scaling an existing business, you’ll find essential tips to best map out your business’s milestones and objectives. Let’s dive in!

What is a strategy plan timeline?

A strategy plan timeline in a business plan is a comprehensive schedule that outlines the sequence of actions, key milestones, and deadlines required to achieve the business’s strategic objectives.

It serves as a roadmap, detailing how the business will transition from its current state to its desired future state over a specified period.

This timeline is crucial for ensuring that strategic goals are met within realistic timeframes, allowing for efficient resource allocation and enabling stakeholders to monitor progress.

The strategy plan timeline can include some or all of the elements below:

• Objectives: The specific, measurable goals the business aims to achieve, aligned with its overall vision and mission.
• Milestones: Significant achievements or checkpoints that indicate progress toward the objectives. These are often quantifiable and serve as interim targets.
• Actions: The steps or initiatives that need to be undertaken to reach each milestone and, ultimately, achieve the objectives. These are typically assigned to specific teams or individuals.
• Deadlines: The timeframes by which milestones and objectives should be met to keep the plan on track. Deadlines help prioritize tasks and ensure timely progress.
• Resources: An outline of the financial, human, and material resources allocated to each action or milestone, ensuring that the plan is realistic and feasible.
• Review Points: Scheduled assessments of the plan’s progress, allowing for adjustments based on performance, external changes, or unforeseen challenges.

Incorporating a strategy plan timeline into a business plan provides a clear path for growth, operational improvements, or other strategic shifts.

It is essential for aligning team efforts, managing stakeholder expectations, and securing investment, as it demonstrates a thoughtful, actionable approach to achieving business success.

How to create a strategy plan timeline: 6 steps

When crafting a strategy plan timeline for a business plan, the goal is to map out a clear, structured path that will guide the business from its current state to achieving its long-term objectives.

This involves setting specific, measurable goals, identifying key milestones, and allocating resources effectively. Here’s a simplified approach to creating a strategy plan timeline that can be tailored to fit the unique needs of different businesses:

1. Define Your Objectives

Start by clearly defining the long-term goals and objectives of your business. What do you want to achieve in the next three to five years? Objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Perform a SWOT analysis to identify your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This will help you understand the internal and external factors that could impact your ability to achieve your objectives.

3. Set Short-term Goals

Break down your long-term objectives into smaller, actionable short-term goals. These should act as stepping stones toward your larger objectives and be achievable within a year.

4. Identify Key Actions and Milestones

For each short-term goal, list out the key actions or steps needed to achieve it. Then, identify significant milestones within these actions, which will serve as markers of progress.

5. Allocate Resources

Determine what resources (financial, human, technological) are needed to accomplish each action and milestone. Allocate these resources accordingly, ensuring that constraints are considered and managed.

6. Establish a Timeline

Assign realistic timeframes to each action and milestone. Your timeline should reflect the urgency and priority of each goal, balancing ambition with feasibility.

Strategy plan timeline: 2 examples

Here are 2 examples you can use as an inspiration to create yours. These are taken from our coffee shop business plan and hair salon business plan templates.

Coffee Shop Example

Hair Salon Example

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Business plan template

Streamline your strategic planning process with a free business plan template.

Leverage a professional business plan template to streamline your strategic planning process. It guides you through each critical aspect of your business, from market research to financial statements, ensuring that no essential detail is overlooked. With this template, organizing your business strategy and defining target customers becomes a more efficient, clear, and manageable task.

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The Importance of a Best Business Plan Template

A robust business plan is the foundation of any successful venture. It serves as a roadmap, guiding through the stages of growth and business development. A comprehensive business plan outlines objectives, strategies, and the means to achieve them, providing clarity and direction. It is essential not only for internal planning but also for communicating the business vision to potential investors and partners.

Overview of a Business Plan Template Structure

The structure of a business plan is critical to its effectiveness. It typically includes a summary, company overview, business model, market research, marketing plan, revenue and expense projections, and details about the management team. Each section plays a vital role in presenting a well-rounded view of the business, its goals, and its strategies. A well-structured business plan is not just a document; it's a strategic tool that can significantly influence the success of a business.

Crafting an Impactful Executive Summary with Simple Business Plan Templates

Key elements of a business plan executive summary.

The executive summary is a concise overview of the business plan, highlighting its key points. It should include the company description, business concept, primary objectives, market opportunity, income statement, and a summary of financial projections. This section is crucial as it's often the first part read by investors and stakeholders, and it sets the tone for the rest of the business plan.

Communicating Your Vision Effectively

Effectively communicating the business vision in the executive summary of the business plan template is vital. This section should encapsulate the essence of the business plan, conveying the ambition, potential, and direction of the business. It needs to be compelling enough to grab the reader's attention and encourage them to read further.

Conducting Thorough Market Analysis

Strategies for effective market analysis.

Market analysis is a critical component of the business plan. It involves examining the industry, target market, and competition. Effective competitive analysis requires gathering substantial data and insights to understand market trends, customer needs, and competitive dynamics. This analysis forms the basis for making informed decisions and strategies.

Interpreting Market Trends and Consumer Needs

Interpreting market trends and consumer needs is vital in positioning the existing business for success. This part of the competitor analysis helps in identifying opportunities and threats within the market and guides the development of strategies to address them. A thorough understanding of the market ensures that the business plan is grounded in reality and has a higher chance of success.

Developing a Strong Marketing Strategy with a Free Business Plan Template

Components of a successful marketing and business plan.

Marketing plans outline strategies for promoting products or services to the target audience. It should detail the marketing mix – product, price, place, and promotion – and explain how these elements will be utilized to reach the market effectively. Well-crafted marketing plans not only identify the target market but also outline specific actions for engaging with potential customers, enhancing brand visibility, and driving sales.

Aligning Marketing Strategies with Business Goals

Aligning marketing strategies with business goals is crucial for the success of any winning business plan. This alignment ensures that marketing efforts are not just tactical but strategic, contributing directly to the achievement of overall business objectives. It requires a deep understanding of both the business goals and the dynamics of the market to create a marketing plan that effectively bridges the gap between the two.

Building Financial Success

Projecting financials and managing budgets.

The finance plan section of the written business plan involves projecting financials, seeking financing, and managing budgets. This section should provide detailed financial forecasts, including income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets for the next few years. It's crucial for demonstrating the financial viability of the business and planning for future growth. Accurate financial projections help in making informed decisions about budget allocation, pricing strategies, and funding requirements.

Strategies to Secure Funding and Financial Growth

Strategies to secure funding are a key part of the financial plan. This involves identifying potential sources of funding, such as loans, investors, or grants, and developing a compelling case to secure these funds. The financial plan should convincingly show how the funds will be used to grow the business and how this growth will be financially sustainable in the long run.

Creating a Competitive Advantage

Identifying and leveraging competitive strengths.

Creating a competitive strength service offering is about identifying and leveraging the unique strengths or differentiators of the business. This could be through superior technology, innovative products, exceptional service, or strong brand positioning. The business plan should articulate these competitive strengths clearly and demonstrate how they will be used to capture market share and achieve business goals.

Sustaining Competitive Advantage in a Changing Market

Sustaining competitive business ideas in a constantly evolving market is challenging. The simple business plan template should outline strategies for maintaining this advantage, such as continuous innovation, adaptability to market changes, and consistent customer engagement. It's about creating a long-term financial plan to stay ahead of competitors and remain relevant in the market.

Assembling an Effective Management Team

Criteria for selecting management team members.

An effective managers team is essential for the success of any detailed business plan. The criteria for selecting key members should focus on diverse skills, experience, and leadership qualities. Each member should bring a unique set of abilities to the table, complementing each other and contributing to a well-rounded leadership team. A well-researched business plan should detail the roles, backgrounds, and responsibilities of each team member, showcasing how their collective expertise will drive the business forward.

Roles and Responsibilities within the Business Planning Team

Defining the roles and responsibilities within the managers' team and business partners is crucial for effective business plans. A successful business plan should clearly outline who is responsible for what areas of the business, ensuring accountability and efficiency. This clarity helps in avoiding overlaps and gaps in leadership, leading to better decision-making and a more cohesive team dynamic.

Navigating Legal and Regulatory Frameworks

Understanding legal requirements and compliance.

Navigating legal and regulatory frameworks is a non-negotiable aspect of any business plan. It involves understanding and complying with all relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards. This section should detail the legal considerations pertinent to the business, such as licenses, permits, and compliance requirements. Adequate attention to legalities not only protects the business from potential liabilities but also builds trust with stakeholders.

Mitigating Risks through Strategic Planning

Mitigating risks through strategic planning is essential for safeguarding a business idea. The business plan template should identify potential risks – financial, operational, legal, and market-related – and outline strategies to mitigate them. This includes plans for risk management, insurance, and contingency planning, ensuring the business is well-prepared for unforeseen challenges.

Utilizing Free Business Plan Templates

Advantages of using a printable business plan template.

Utilizing a free business template can be a practical starting point for drafting a new business plan. These templates provide a structured format and essential guidelines, which can be particularly beneficial for first-time entrepreneurs or small business owners. They help in organizing thoughts, ensuring all critical components of business plans are covered, and saving time in the planning process.

Customizing Templates to Fit Specific Business Needs

While free business templates offer a solid foundation, customizing them to fit specific business needs is crucial. This customization involves adapting the template to reflect the unique aspects of the new business, its industry, and its market. Tailoring the template ensures that the business plan format is relevant, focused, and aligned with the business’s specific goals and strategies.

Integrating TimeCamp Planner in Business Planning

Enhancing solid business plan execution with timecamp planner.

Integrating TimeCamp Planner into writing a business plan can significantly enhance execution efficiency. TimeCamp Planner offers features that support task management, time tracking, and progress monitoring – all crucial for implementing the strategies outlined in the business plan. Its use can lead to better resource allocation, improved time management, and more effective project execution.

TimeCamp Planner’s Role in Streamlining Business Processes

TimeCamp Planner plays a pivotal role in the writing process and streamlining established business processes, aligning perfectly with the principles of effective business planning. It provides insights into productivity, helps in identifying bottlenecks, and offers data-driven analytics for continuous improvement. Incorporating TimeCamp Planner in the business plan demonstrates a commitment to using advanced tools for optimal business management.

Conclusion: Executing and Revising Your Simple Business Plan Template

The journey from business planning to business success.

The journey from drafting a business plan template to achieving business success involves diligent execution and constant revision. A well-crafted business plan sets the stage, but it is the ongoing effort, adaptability, and commitment to the plan that ultimately lead to success. Regularly reviewing and updating the business plan in response to market changes, business growth, and new opportunities is crucial.

The Importance of Continual Plan Evaluation and Adaptation

Continual evaluation and adaptation of a business plan template is essential in today's dynamic business environment. The business plan template should not be a static document; it needs to evolve as the business grows and the market changes. Periodic reviews and updates help in staying relevant, addressing new challenges, and seizing emerging opportunities.

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Strategic Planning Timeline

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Unlock Your Business’s Potential with Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is more than just setting goals; it’s a roadmap for success. Whether you’re steering a startup or managing a well-established company, strategic planning is vital. 

That’s where Coefficient’s Strategic Planning Timeline for Google Sheets comes in, offering a structured and efficient way to visualize and achieve your business objectives.

The Pillars of Effective Strategic Planning

• Mission and Vision Statements: These are not just formalities; they’re the heart of your strategy. They define your business’s purpose and the path to your goals.
• SWOT Analysis: This crucial step involves assessing your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It sets the stage for informed decision-making.
• Setting Realistic Goals: By identifying specific, measurable, and achievable objectives, you align your team’s efforts with your company’s vision.

Mastering the Template: From Download to Success

Using Coefficient’s template is a breeze. Follow these steps to move from download to strategic analysis:

• Download the Template: Access the easy-to-use strategic planning tool tailored for Google Sheets.
• Fill in Key Details: Enter information about your mission, vision, SWOT analysis, and goals.
• Customize As Needed: Adapt the template to fit the unique aspects of your business.
• Track Your Progress: Use the template to monitor your journey towards your strategic objectives.
• Analyze and Adapt: Continuously evaluate and refine your strategy based on real-world outcomes.

Conclusion: Your Strategy, Streamlined

With Coefficient’s Strategic Planning Timeline for Google Sheets, you’re not just planning; you’re setting the stage for triumph.

Download Now and Start Crafting Your Business’s Future Today!

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• 5 Year Plan

5-Year Plan Template

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A 5-year plan is a long-term strategic roadmap for reaching specific goals. It describes where you are now, what your objectives are and how you plan to achieve them. Whether your goals for the next five years are to carry out a complex project or grow your business and start exciting new projects, a 5-year plan helps you gain insight, communicate your vision and effectively run your initiatives.

Why you should have a 5-year plan

Creating a 5-year business plan can be challenging because it requires a lot of research, forecasting, and strategic thinking. But does it pay off? Let’s figure it out while going through the things that a 5-year plan can improve:

1. Communicate vision and goals

Built as a clear and specific roadmap for the company's future, a 5-year plan helps you share your vision with your team and clients by describing your long-term objectives and the key elements of your strategy.

2. Monitor progress

You can use a 5-year plan to measure your company’s progress, which helps identify areas for improvement and opportunities for growth. It also promotes focusing on long-term objectives.

3. Enable strategic planning and policies

5-year plans help forecasting and improving strategy when making decisions. For instance, you can make strategic hiring decisions and adjust responsibilities among teams per forecast and estimated needs. Or redirect financial resources according to the assessed priorities.

4. Guide important decisions

A long-term plan clarifies business priorities and states the strategic objectives that will be the reference point during the decision-making process.

5. Build confidence and engagement among stakeholders

You’ve made a list of your business goals, but how do you think that your company can achieve them? What’s your plan to get there? Such questions are on the minds of your investors, your customers, and your employees. A long-term plan shows stakeholders why you exist, where you plan to go, how you intend to get there, and the impact of their voice on the decision-making process.

6. Attract potential investors (especially for start-up companies)

A 5-year plan is essential for both existing and potential investors. A well-written plan addresses investors’ top concerns and reassures them that your company is headed in the right direction to make a profit.

To help you set a clear direction to your plans and kickstart your business planning, this page offers you a free, downloadable 5-year plan timeline template and information on how to use this type of visual.

What should be included in a 5-year plan?

A well-thought-out 5-year plan used for business purposes is a well-rounded document or presentation that typically includes the following key sections:

• Executive summary – summarizing all the sections of your plan;
• Elevator pitch – a brief description of your business to clearly articulate it to important stakeholders;
• Mission statement – at an internal level, it helps employees align their efforts with the company’s overall goal; externally, it inspires third parties (investors, customers, partners) to take the actions you want and support you;
• SWOT analysis – helping you determine the best opportunities to pursue, and identify the areas which must be developed to improve your company;
• List of specific short- and long-term strategic goals – clearly outlining the trajectory your company needs to follow;
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) – metrics that indicate how your business is performing and what needs to be adjusted;
• Target customers – identifying the wants and needs of your target customer groups will guide your marketing efforts;
• Industry analysis – helping you identify new opportunities for growth;
• Competitive analysis and advantage – defining who your key competitors are, what their strengths and weaknesses are so you can determine your current competitive advantage and ways to develop additional ones;
• Marketing plan – describing methods and strategies of attracting prospects, converting them to paying customers and maximizing your lifetime customer value;
• Team – listing current team members and types of people you need to hire in the future, this section focuses on the human resources required to execute on the established goals and identified opportunities;
• Operations plan – mapping out all your initiatives and identifying each individual project that contains larger goals;
• Financial projections – assessing the potential results for each opportunity you consider pursuing;
• Timeline – illustrating the major tasks and milestones that will have an impact on your project.

How do I write a 5-year business plan?

When creating a 5-year business plan, here are the steps you need to follow:

• First, make an overall assessment of how your business is currently doing – clearly review your business mission and vision statements, your sales data and financial records; then, pinpoint your business’s strengths and weaknesses , along with the opportunities and risks that it faces in relation to the industry, economy and competition.
• State where you want your business to be in 5 years – how big do you want your business to grow? Would you like to start selling nationally? Do you want to develop your product line, expand your target market or selling channels?
• Establish a set of concrete steps to take in order to achieve your goals – start from your desired outcome and work backward to identify what you need to do to achieve them. The closer you get to today, the more details your plan of action will be.
• Decide how you will measure success – create specific and measurable goals and determine how you will measure the results (what will your KPIs be?)
• Gather all this information in a cohesive document that goes through the sections outlined above and regularly review your plan.

Using the 5-year plan timeline template

This 5-year plan timeline template was designed for professionals who need a hand to summarize long-term plans or roadmaps. It’s a quick way out when you need to prepare for an upcoming meeting with your clients or executives, or when you are prepping a business review meeting with your team.

You can use this 5-year plan timeline template to achieve the following goals:

1. Project planning

The template is structured on a well-defined timeline that includes placeholders for key milestones and tasks. Project planners and project managers can use our 5-year plan timeline template to:

- Estimate and forecast resource requirements and to define the stages, milestones and resources needed to deliver their initiatives.

- Help determine the sequence of tasks that must be accomplished by a certain time schedule, in order to achieve the objective.

2. Project tracking

As the project moves along, project managers can use the 5-year plan timeline template as a quick visual to track their progress vs. the original plan.

3. Project reporting and communication

Designed as a concise project overview, it displays the essential data on a single PowerPoint slide and is simple to understand and easy to read. This makes the five-year timeline template ideal for efficient reporting and communication.

How to customize the 5-year plan timeline template

Since the template is built directly in PowerPoint, you can easily edit it to fit the particular style guides or color schemes of your company. It is intended to replace complicated Gantt charts, Excel tables, and hard-to-follow milestone charts.

Easy automation with Office Timeline

This timeline template was created with the timeline creator from Office Timeline which helps you to automatically bring in your data into the slide with just a few clicks and keep it updated with one click.

Office Timeline is a free project planner add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, and it integrates with tools such as Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. This allows you to quickly import or copy/paste existing project data into PowerPoint and instantly transform it into the 5-year plan you need.

You can find detailed instructions on how to automatically populate your slides with project data from other programs on these pages from our Support Center :

How to import from Excel

How to import from Microsoft Project

How to import from Smartsheet

How to import from Wrike

Copying and pasting from Excel into Office Timeline

Frequently asked questions about 5-year planners and templates

Check out the answers to these frequently asked questions about 5-year planning:

How do you create a 5-year plan template?

To create a 5-year business plan template follow these three simple steps:

Outline the overall structure of the plan. Start by making a rough plan for each year.

Make sure that the 5-year plan includes sections for elements that are usually required in a long-term business plan, such as an executive summary, a SWOT analysis, an analysis of your market and competitors, and an estimate of your resources.

Save your template with a suggestive name so that you can easily find it. You’ll be able to re-use it whenever you need to draft a long-term plan for a new project. To do this, you’ll have to make the appropriate customizations and include relevant industry-specific information and market research, according to each project.

Why is it important to have a 5-year plan?

A 5-year business plan is important because it serves as a roadmap for the company's progress and growth. A well-crafted long-term plan can help a company to:

set long-term goals,

establish priorities,

make informed business decisions,

secure funding from investors or lenders,

identify potential opportunities for growth,

measure progress and success over time,

anticipate and prepare for changes in the market and industry.

In short, a strategic long-time plan helps you in the decisional process on the company's future. A business with a long-term business plan has an improved overall strategy and is more prepared for potential obstacles it may face.

What is a good 5-year plan for a business?

A good 5-year business plan should provide a clear description of the status of a company, an honest perspective of its future growth and realistic, achievable goals that align with the company's mission and vision.

A 5-year plan would include at the very least:

A clear and detailed description of the company's products or services, target market, and competitive landscape.

Projected financials and strategies.

A risk management plan that identifies potential risks and outlines strategies to mitigate them.

And finally, long-term planning needs flexibility. A 5-year plan would need to be reviewed and updated regularly, at least once a year, but ideally it would include several review milestones every year to ensure that the business stays on track to meet its goals. The plan should be adaptable, as the business environment may change and require adjustments.

What does a good strategic plan look like?

Strategic planning is a company’s process of defining its direction and the road to attain the intended goals. It can benefit your organization's vision and progress toward goals. Strategic planning typically means mid- to long-term goals (three to five years or longer) and differs from business planning, which typically focuses on short-term goals, such as budgeting estimations for the next quarter or year.

Simply put, a basic good strategic plan should answer these three questions:

Where is the company now?

Where is the company going? Or what are the objectives?

How is the company going to reach its objectives?

Lastly, a good strategic plan should be regularly reviewed, maintained up-to date and taken into consideration when decisions are made. For this, the document should be flexible and dynamic, adjustable to accommodate the changes that inevitably happen, especially with long-time planning.

How do you set a 5-year business goal?

To set a 5-year business goal, you first need to determine your company's mission and objectives. This is needed in order to align the goal with the company's mission and vision. Setting your business goal means that you have a clear and specific objective. It also means that you take into consideration the current market and industry analysis.

The next step is to craft a plan with specific steps to achieve the goal. A 5-year plan template like the one above can come in handy to help you kickstart your planning.

And finally, you need to find a system to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. Changes are bound to happen when you plan on a long-term basis.

Communicating the goal and plan to stakeholders ensures that everyone is aligned and working towards the same objective. Some of the most efficient tools that you can use to this end are business plan presentations and executive summaries, enriched with suggestive and concise visuals, such as Gantt charts, timelines and roadmaps. Take a look at our timeline template gallery and find inspiration for your next presentation.

What does a 5-year strategy look like?

A typical 5-year strategy includes a mission statement, the description of the company’s defining features and status, a set of long-term goals that align with the company's vision and a plan for achieving those goals.

Business managers and project managers often resort to visual aids to create a material support of their vision that they can use to share their ideas and strategy in a suggestive and compelling way. An effective visual should bind the strategy (the “why”), the actions that need to be performed in order to achieve the goals (the “what”), and timeline for completion (the “when”).

Such complex roadmaps provide a clear overview of the strategic tasks and milestones, allow hierarchization, show prioritized effort and highlight interrelated work.

The 5-year plan template available on this page was built with the lightweight PowerPoint add-in from Office Timeline, that you can try for free for 14 days and take advantage of the full features the tens of templates that can be automatically customized and updated with just a few clicks in minutes instead of hours.

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Updating your template is simple and fast.

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Business Timeline

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Take pride in telling the story of your business, its growth and origination. This business timeline template is often used by both startups and established enterprises to communicate growth and progress over the years. This template is ideal when presenting to investors, employees, board members and shareholders.

Business Timeline Template is designed in a modern style and has all the necessary tools to prepare your company’s history. The first slide presents you with an opportunity to share your company’s achievements. You can inform your audience about your company’s key projects and future plans. Also, this slide can be used to familiarize yourself with the main topics that will be covered in your presentation. You can also use this slide to prepare a successful story about your new company director. What projects he has implemented throughout his career, in which companies and what positions he held before heading your company. The second slide can be used to create a roadmap for the project. You can also use it when preparing to discuss the main terms of the contract with the client. This slide will be useful for team leaders, project managers, department heads. You can use it to set weekly tasks for your employees. This slide will also be useful for research centers and scientific institutes. You can talk about your laboratory research in various fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, and others. The next slide is shown as a vertical timeline. This gives you the ability to split your presentation slide into two equal parts. You can use this slide to describe the story of the successful completion of the project. For example, a construction company might use this slide to prepare a presentation about the completion of a large complex or a modern hospital. You can also inform your audience about your strategic plans for the next few years, identify specific projects that you plan to complete. The last slide can be used by HR managers when preparing information about the company, its main achievements, development plans. This information will be very important for new employees of the company, which will help them to quickly understand the corporate rules and work standards. This slide can also be used in their work by start-up teams who can present their successfully implemented projects to investors.

Available in five design variations, this PowerPoint template presents horizontal and vertical timelines containing milestones, illustrations, data visualizations and text descriptions. This presentation is useful for demonstrating history review such as, company’s performance or growth. It can help display the breakthrough elements of company, project or forecast where the company is headed. The template can be modified to match your brand aesthetic. The colors, text and shapes are customizable and editable. The template will perfectly complement any of your presentation about the success of the company or the outstanding achievements of an employee.

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Customizable project timeline and roadmap templates

Plotting your course isn't just clarifying, it can be captivating too. build your next project timeline or roadmap using designer-developed, customizable templates. no matter what kind of project you're planning or managing, there's a timeline template that'll keep you on track..

Show your plan at a glance with timeline templates

Don't waste any time—start your next project plan or production roadmap with a timeline template. Timelines are a great way to visually organize your thoughts, plotting each step that you plan to execute. Making planners and trackers into timelines is a snap when working with templates. You can also use timeline templates to show how far a project has come along, every milestone accounted for. Small businesses can find timelines helpful for pitching new business during presentations as well as planning new products. And adding a timeline to a wedding save the date or an invitation is a great way to let guests know everything they can look forward to during your celebration. Timelines aren't just for project planning. Resumes are themselves a kind of timeline, and there are some fantastic graphic resume layouts that incorporate easy-to-read timelines that make your work history stand out.

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Timeline Retrospective by Voltage Control

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Streamline your recruitment process with the Hiring Process Timeline by Rizwan Khawaja. This template helps you organize every step of hiring, from job advertisement to final onboarding. Visualize timelines, track candidates, and ensure an efficient hiring workflow. Perfect for HR professionals aiming to improve their recruitment strategy and reduce time-to-hire.

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Join thousands of teams collaborating and doing their best work on Miro.

About the timeline templates collection

Unlock your creativity with Miro's collection of timeline templates. Here, you'll discover a hand-picked selection of templates that revolutionize the way you visualize project timelines and milestones. Whether you're planning the next major product launch or scheduling a series of events, our templates are created to simplify time management. They are user-friendly, customizable, and ready to capture the essence of your project's story.

Why you'll love our timeline examples

Our timeline examples are more than just placeholders; they're a source of inspiration. They show you the potential of what your timelines can be – clear, engaging, and informative. With these examples, you'll see how easy it is to track progress, align your team, and communicate with stakeholders. It's about making every second count and every update shine.

How to use the timeline templates in Miro

Choose your template : Kick things off by selecting the perfect template from our collection that fits your project's timeline.

Make it yours : Customize your timeline by adding key dates, milestones, and durations. Tailor the aesthetics to match your project or brand style.

Collaborate in real time : Bring your team into the fold. Miro's collaborative environment means everyone can contribute, edit, and update in sync.

Stay agile : Projects change, and so should your timeline. Use our flexible tools to adjust dates and details as your project evolves.

Showcase your timeline : Share your dynamic timeline with stakeholders or your entire team, providing a comprehensive and easy-to-understand visual narrative.

With Miro's timeline templates, you're equipped to turn the abstract into the concrete. It's time to map out success, one milestone at a time.

How to Create the Perfect Project Timeline [Template + Examples]

Updated: July 25, 2022

Published: October 01, 2021

Piecing together a project timeline template usually involves a Google Doc and mediocre formatting skills. Then comes assigning tasks to teammates and promising to hit the agreed-upon delivery date. But a few weeks go by, and the timeline falls apart. Higher priorities pop up, and deadlines slip past without much progress.

Projects can fail for many reasons: a lack of support from leadership, unforeseen budget cuts, or overpromising outcomes. In fact, poor project management is more common than you think – only 55% of projects are completed on time .

But creating a timeline where everyone involved knows what they're working on and when it's due can help ensure your project doesn't creep past its original deadline. It's essential for keeping projects (and the people completing them) on track.

To make sure your next project stays on schedule, we'll cover how to set up a project timeline, the best templates to use, and a handful of examples to inspire your future scheduling.

16 Free Timeline & Flowchart Templates

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• Company Project Timeline
• A/B Testing Flowchart
• Onboarding Flowchart

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Why Create a Project Timeline?

Time management is one of the top skills employers look for in candidates. Missed deadlines and rushed projects can set entire teams (and companies) behind schedule.

A structured project timeline offers more than brownie points from your boss. It can also:

• Bring leadership and structure to a project
• Outline what is being delivered, by when
• Share who is responsible for each task and sets expectations for the scope, quality, and delivery of work
• Show how the project outcome contributes to company goals
• Decrease risk by accounting for any changes to the project scope, budget, deliverables, or deadlines.

Ultimately, a project timeline makes it easier and more efficient to manage a project. But it's important to match the timeline structure to the project scope. Planning an editorial calendar for the quarter may take more time and effort than creating a marketing video for an upcoming product launch.

That's where the right template comes in.

8 Free Timeline Templates

Fill out the form to get your free templates., project timeline example.

Without the right project timeline template, organizing a project can be a lot of manual work — not to mention the formatting mess once multiple people get their hands on it.

The ideal timeline brings direction to a project, yet is easily adaptable when changes arise. Here's a look at a project timeline for opening a new company office.

You can create a project timeline for any process that relies on a schedule (almost everything these days), like onboarding employees, handling a crisis, or planning social media campaigns. All you need to know is how to outline the steps of a project and the tasks required to complete each phase.

Let's get into the details.

How to Create a Project Timeline

Crafting the perfect project timeline takes strategy, organizational skills, and a whole lot of collaboration. You need buy-in from supporters and clear directives for everyone involved.

To get started, follow this step-by-step guide to set up a structured timeline — no matter your job, industry, or management level.

1. Write a project brief.

A project brief communicates how you will approach a project. It includes details on the goals, deliverables, timeline, tasks, process, people involved, and resources needed to take a project from start to finish.

Asana outlined the steps to create a simple, yet effective, project brief. You can use this free project plan template to outline the project's goals, roles and responsibilities, schedule, deliverables, budget, and more. It's a great starting point for any planning process.

Or if you need a more comprehensive overview that includes key messaging and distribution processes, a creative brief may be the right fit for your project.

2. List all tasks and action items.

Every task involved in achieving a project's objectives needs to go into the project timeline. After creating the brief, make a list of these tasks. You can start with large tasks and break them down into smaller to-dos.

Let's say you're responsible for creating a marketing video to launch your company's newest product. Your list may include the following:

• Establish project leads from each department
• Set project budget
• Find a video production company
• Layout the video storyboard
• Choose main features for video
• Write video script
• Capture video content
• Add in sound and background music
• Add animations and graphics
• Write announcement copy
• Craft marketing campaign
• Create clips for social sharing
• Get video and marketing assets approved

Once you have the major milestones down, break down each task into smaller pieces. For example, choosing a video production company involves:

• Research video production companies
• Curate a list of production companies
• Get quotes from each production company
• Compare quotes and narrow down options
• Meet with the selected companies
• Choose a production company
• Finalize the contract

3. Connect dependencies.

In a project, certain tasks can't be started until another is complete. These tasks are called dependencies. For example, a video can't be filmed until the storyboard is finalized. And the storyboard can't be finalized until the video theme is chosen.

Mapping out dependencies helps you solidify the order of each task and decide who's responsible for what. Everyone will know what part of the project they're working on, which tasks must be completed before their own, and who to contact for the deliverables they need.

Here's a look at how dependencies can play out in a project timeline.

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In the example, you can see that hiring a caterer has to happen before finalizing the lunch menu. But other tasks, like finding a DJ and deciding on an event theme, can happen at the same time. So as you map out each task, you'll have to see which steps can overlap and which need to wait for others.

4. Estimate the time it will take to complete each task.

Once you figure out the sequence of tasks, you need to figure out how much time each will take. Estimate as best you can. That way, it'll be easier to create the project roadmap and understand the project's overall time frame.

As you go, make sure to consider the other projects and priorities your team has going on. A designer may be able to come up with a rough draft of video animations in one week, but if they're wrapping up another project, they may not be able to start on yours for another two weeks.

Being mindful of your team's time will make it easier to put together a reasonable, reliable timeline.

5. Create the project timeline.

Build your timeline by organizing your tasks from the first to the final step. Make any necessary adjustments to the task times, add milestones, and solidify the deadline. If your team works with a timeline maker or project management software , organize the timeline and tasks so it's ready to share after the project kickoff meeting.

You can save time during this step by using one of the project timeline templates below. It's simple to customize each and avoid the extra work of creating your own from scratch.

6. Share the timeline with the project team.

Whew, your timeline is complete! Now, you have to share it with stakeholders. This includes everyone who is involved in the project. You've already listed these people out in your brief (during step one), so it's time to share your clear path forward for the project with them.

It's a good idea to hold a project kickoff meeting with both stakeholders and individual contributors so everyone starts on the same page. You can communicate the project goals, deliverables, roles, and deadlines — without going into an overwhelming amount of detail. From there, you'll want to schedule time with the project's immediate contributors to chat specifics and answer any questions before the work begins.

Need help visualizing the entire project? It can help to include a timeline graphic like the one below to give everyone a sense of the overall time frame. You can add or remove steps, depending on the complexity of your project.

7. Adapt as you go.

Remember how just over half of projects are finished on time? Roadblocks and setbacks are inevitable in every project. So if your team runs into a delay, you'll have to understand the impact and adjust the timeline if necessary.

While it's possible to make up for delays without changing the final deadline, it's your job as the project owner to update stakeholders on the project's progress. Reporting a minor issue (like a coworker being out sick for a few days) isn't always necessary to higher-ups. But if it's a major roadblock that requires an extreme adjustment to the timeline (like a core contributor leaving the team), you have to communicate a new timeline to stakeholders.

Change is part of every company, so don't panic if you have to adjust your timeline. It's better to be transparent about the scope of work and timeline than keep people in the dark until the deadline hits. The earlier you adjust to change, the easier it will be to get back on track.

Project Timeline Examples

Visualizing a project makes it simple to understand what needs to happen from start to finish. Whether you need a template for a product launch or campaign meeting, these well-designed project timeline templates are perfect for your next planning session.

Employee Onboarding Timeline

Download this Template for Free

Product Launch Timeline

Crisis Response Project Timeline

Historical Timeline

Task Project Timeline

Meeting Project Timeline

Need as many templates as you can get? Download all of these project timelines (and more) for free. With the right timelines in hand, it's easy to keep everyone up to date and informed. Now all you have to do is make sure your projects stay on schedule. Good luck!

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Blog Business How to Write a Business Plan Outline [Examples + Templates] 

How to Write a Business Plan Outline [Examples + Templates] 

Written by: Letícia Fonseca Aug 11, 2023

When starting a business plan, the first hurdle is often getting started. And how do you avoid spending hours staring at a blank page? Start with a business plan outline. An outline helps provide clarity and direction, especially for important documents like a business plan.

I get that the idea of outlining a business plan can feel overwhelming, which is why I’ve gathered all the information you need to make it easier. Don’t worry, you’ve got this!

And if you’re seeking further assistance, a business plan maker and readily available business plan templates can offer valuable support in shaping your comprehensive plan.

Read on for answers to all your business plan outline questions or jump ahead for some handy templates. 

Click to jump ahead:

What is a business plan outline?

7 steps to writing a business plan outline, business plan outline examples.

• Writing tips to ace your outline 

What format should you choose for your business plan outline?

A business plan outline is the backbone of your business plan. It contains all the most important information you’ll want to expand on in your full-length plan. 

Think of it this way: your outline is a frame for your plan. It provides a high-level idea of what the final plan should look like, what it will include and how all the information will be organized. 

Why would you do this extra step? Beyond saving you from blank page syndrome, an outline ensures you don’t leave any essential information out of your plan — you can see all the most important points at a glance and quickly identify any content gaps. 

It also serves as a writing guide. Once you know all the sections you want in your plan, you just need to expand on them. Suddenly, you’re “filling in the blanks” as opposed to writing a plan from scratch!

Incidentally, using a business plan template like this one gives you a running head start, too: 

Perhaps most importantly, a business plan outline keeps you focused on the essential parts of your document. (Not to mention what matters most to stakeholders and investors.)  With an outline, you’ll spend less time worrying about structure or organization and more time perfecting the actual content of your document. 

If you’re looking for more general advice, you can read about  how to create a business plan here . But if you’re working on outlining your plan, stick with me.

Your business plan outline should include all the following sections. The level of detail you choose to go into will depend on your intentions for your plan (sharing with stakeholders vs. internal use), but you’ll want every section to be clear and to the point. 

1. Executive summary

The executive summary gives a high-level description of your company, product or service. This section should include a mission statement, your company description, your business’s primary goal, and the problem it aims to solve. You’ll want to state how your business can solve the problem and briefly explain what makes you stand out (your competitive advantage).

Having an executive summary is essential to selling your business to stakeholders , so it should be as clear and concise as possible. Summarize your business in a few sentences in a way that will hook the reader (or audience) and get them invested in what you have to say next. In other words, this is your elevator pitch.

2. Product and services description

This is where you should go into more detail about your product or service. Your product is the heart of your business, so it’s essential this section is easy to grasp. After all, if people don’t know what you’re selling, you’ll have a hard time keeping them engaged!

Expand on your description in the executive summary, going into detail about the problem your customers face and how your product/service will solve it. If you have various products or services, go through all of them in equal detail. 

3. Target market and/or Market analysis

A market analysis is crucial for placing your business in a larger context and showing investors you know your industry. This section should include market research on your prospective customer demographic including location, age range, goals and motivations. 

You can even  include detailed customer personas  as a visual aid — these are especially useful if you have several target demographics. You want to showcase your knowledge of your customer, who exactly you’re selling to and how you can fulfill their needs.

Be sure to include information on the overall target market for your product, including direct and indirect competitors and how your industry is performing. If your competitors have strengths you want to mimic or weaknesses you want to exploit, this is the place to record that information. 

4. Organization and management

You can think of this as a “meet the team” section — this is where you should go into depth on your business’s structure from management to legal and HR. If there are people bringing unique skills or experience to the table (I’m sure there are!), you should highlight them in this section. 

The goal here is to showcase why your team is the best to run your business. Investors want to know you’re unified, organized and reliable. This is also a potential opportunity to bring more humanity to your business plan and showcase the faces behind the ideas and product. 

5. Marketing and sales

Now that you’ve introduced your product and team, you need to explain how you’re going to sell it. Give a detailed explanation of your sales and marketing strategy, including pricing, timelines for launching your product and advertising.

This is a major section of your plan and can even live as a separate document for your marketing and sales teams. Here are some  marketing plan templates to help you get started .

Make sure you have research or analysis to back up your decisions — if you want to do paid ads on LinkedIn to advertise your product, include a brief explanation as to why that is the best channel for your business. 

6. Financial projections and funding request

The end of your plan is where you’ll look to the future and how you think your business will perform financially. Your financial plan should include results from your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow projections. 

State your funding requirements and what you need to realize the business. Be extremely clear about how you plan to use the funding and when you expect investors will see returns.

If you aren’t presenting to potential investors, you can skip this part, but it’s something to keep in mind should you seek funding in the future. Covering financial projections and the previous five components is essential at the stage of business formation to ensure everything goes smoothly moving forward.

7. Appendix

Any extra visual aids, receipts, paperwork or charts will live here. Anything that may be relevant to your plan should be included as reference e.g. your cash flow statement (or other financial statements). You can format your appendix in whatever way you think is best — as long as it’s easy for readers to find what they’re looking for, you’ve done your job!

Typically, the best way to start your outline is to list all these high-level sections. Then, you can add bullet points outlining what will go in each section and the resources you’ll need to write them. This should give you a solid starting point for your full-length plan.

Looking for a shortcut? Our  business plan templates  are basically outlines in a box! 

While your outline likely won’t go into as much detail, these templates are great examples of how to organize your sections.

Traditional format examples

A strong template can turn your long, dense business plan into an engaging, easy-to-read document. There are lots to choose from, but here are just a few ideas to inspire you… 

You can duplicate pages and use these styles for a traditional outline, or start with a lean outline as you build your business plan out over time:

Lean format examples

For lean format outlines, a simpler ‘ mind map ’ style is a good bet. With this style, you can get ideas down fast and quickly turn them into one or two-page plans. Plus, because they’re shorter, they’re easy to share with your team.

Writing tips to ace your business plan outline

Business plans are complex documents, so if you’re still not sure how to write your outline, don’t worry! Here are some helpful tips to keep in mind when drafting your business plan outline:

• Ask yourself why you’re writing an outline. Having a clear goal for your outline can help keep you on track as you write. Everything you include in your plan should contribute to your goal. If it doesn’t, it probably doesn’t need to be in there.
• Keep it clear and concise. Whether you’re writing a traditional or lean format business plan, your outline should be easy to understand. Choose your words wisely and avoid unnecessary preambles or padding language. The faster you get to the point, the easier your plan will be to read.
• Add visual aids. No one likes reading huge walls of text! Make room in your outline for visuals, data and charts. This keeps your audience engaged and helps those who are more visual learners. Psst,  infographics  are great for this.
• Make it collaborative. Have someone (or several someones) look it over before finalizing your outline. If you have an established marketing / sales / finance team, have them look it over too. Getting feedback at the outline stage can help you avoid rewrites and wasted time down the line.

If this is your first time writing a business plan outline, don’t be too hard on yourself. You might not get it 100% right on the first try, but with these tips and the key components listed above, you’ll have a strong foundation. Remember, done is better than perfect. 

Most business plans fit into one of two formats. 

The format you choose largely depends on three factors: (1) the stage of your business, (2) if you’re presenting the plan to investors and (3) what you want to achieve with your business plan. 

Let’s have a closer look at these two formats and why you might choose one over the other.

Traditional format

Traditional business plans  are typically long, detailed documents. In many cases, they take up to 50-60 pages, but it’s not uncommon to see plans spanning 100+ pages. 

Traditional plans are long because they cover  every aspect  of your business. They leave nothing out. You’ll find a traditional business plan template with sections like executive summary, company description, target market, market analysis, marketing plan, financial plan, and more. Basically: the more information the merrier.

This business plan template isn’t of a traditional format, but you could expand it into one by duplicating pages:

Due to their high level of detail, traditional formats are the best way to sell your business. They show you’re reliable and have a clear vision for your business’s future. 

If you’re planning on presenting your plan to investors and stakeholders, you’ll want to go with a traditional plan format. The more information you include, the fewer doubts and questions you’ll get when you present your plan, so don’t hold back. 

Traditional business plans require more detailed outlines before drafting since there’s a lot of information to cover. You’ll want to list all the sections and include bullet points describing what each section should cover. 

It’s also a good idea to include all external resources and visuals in your outline, so you don’t have to gather them later. 

Lean format

Lean business plan formats are high level and quick to write. They’re often only one or two pages. Similar to a  business plan infographic , they’re scannable and quick to digest, like this template: 

This format is often referred to as a “startup” format due to (you guessed it!) many startups using it. 

Lean business plans require less detailed outlines. You can include high-level sections and a few lines in each section covering the basics. Since the final plan will only be a page or two, you don’t need to over prepare. Nor will you need a ton of external resources. 

Lean plans don’t answer all the questions investors and stakeholders may ask, so if you go this route, make sure it’s the right choice for your business . Companies not yet ready to present to investors will typically use a lean/startup business plan format to get their rough plan on paper and share it internally with their management team. 

Here’s another example of a lean business plan format in the form of a financial plan: 

Create a winning business plan by starting with a detailed, actionable outline

The best way to learn is by doing. So go ahead, get started on your business plan outline. As you develop your plan, you’ll no doubt learn more about your business and what’s important for success along the way. 

A clean, compelling template is a great way to get a head start on your outline. After all, the sections are already separated and defined for you! 

Explore Venngage’s business plan templates  for one that suits your needs. Many are free to use and there are premium templates available for a small monthly fee. Happy outlining!

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Free Project Timeline Templates for Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and More

By Kate Eby | July 17, 2019 (updated March 23, 2024)

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We’ve compiled the most useful collection of free project timeline templates for project managers, sponsors, team members, and other project stakeholders to better track and manage their projects. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a simple project timeline template , a project milestone chart template , a weekly project timeline template , an annual project timeline template , and a multiple project timeline template , among others. We’ve also included a list of helpful tips for completing these project timeline templates .

Project Timeline Template

Download a Sample Project Timeline Template for Excel | Google Sheets

Download a Blank Project Timeline Template for Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Display key project information, like tasks and important milestones, using this simple project  timeline template. Track task start and end dates, and view them against each other in weekly, monthly, or yearly views. Color-code the tasks based on phases or categories to gain a quick overview of how your project is progressing.

You can also make your own timeline from scratch — learn how to create a timeline in Microsoft Word .

Project Timeline Presentation Template for PowerPoint

Download the Project Timeline Presentation Template for PowerPoint  

Use this simple presentation-ready project timeline presentation template to introduce key milestones to project team members and other stakeholders, or update them on project progress. Enter your project timeline details about its conception and initiation, definition and planning, the project launch and its execution, its overall performance and the project closing. With drag-and-drop project features, tasks, and milestones, this template is the perfect solution for all project team members and sponsors to ensure your project remains on track.

For Microsoft Project Gantt chart solutions and resources, learn how to create a Gantt chart in Microsoft Project .

Weekly Project Timeline Template

Download a Project Timeline Template for Excel | Microsoft Word | PowerPoint  

See your project at a glance with this timeline template designed for weekly viewing. Track each task by the week, identify who is responsible for what task, and document task names — or color-code them — with this easy-to-use, weekly project timeline template.

Project Milestone Chart Template

Download a Project Milestone Chart Template for Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Plot important project milestones and view their dates of delivery, their status, and the person responsible with this visual project milestone chart template. Stay on top of each important project date and task, and share among team members to improve visibility into how a project is progressing.

Learn how to Learn how to make a free Excel timeline template with step-by-step instructions.

Event Marketing Timeline Template

Download an Event Marketing Timeline Template for Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

List all the important information for a specific marketing campaign or initiative, like campaign type, phase name, and start and end dates, so you’re always on top of the marketing projects that are going live. You can plan, track, and monitor the success of your efforts and customize the template for all sizes and types of events.

Marketing Project Timeline Template

Download a Marketing Project Timeline Template for Excel | PowerPoint | Smartsheet

Visually show each stage of your marketing plan with this colorful, customizable marketing project timeline template. Use this template to show the phases of the plan and all associated details, and present specific information to key stakeholders in order to keep them informed of your progress. With this professionally designed template, you’re bound to gain buy-in and streamline your planning process.

Simple Project Timeline Template

Download a Simple Project Timeline Template for  Excel | Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

With this simple timeline template, document tasks and subtasks, assign them to team members, and mark them off as the team completes them to stay on top of your project. Identify start and end dates for each task, and the duration will automatically be calculated (in days).

Strategic Project Planning Timeline Template

Download a Strategic Project Planning Timeline Template for  Excel | Google Sheets  

Designed to help you strategically think through and plan out your project, this timeline template highlights specific goals and tasks over a predetermined period of time. Use this template to separate tasks by category and facilitate discussion around the most important tasks and when team members should complete them.

Annual Project Timeline Template

Download an Annual Project Timeline Template for  Excel | Google Sheets  

Track every task or initiative that goes into a project on a visual, 12-month timeline, so you can better prepare for all project efforts over the course of the year. This template gives you the ability to track current projects and view past tasks in a summary view in order to assess performance and make future business decisions.

6-Month Project Timeline Template

Download a 6-Month Project Timeline Template for  Excel | PowerPoint

Track your project in increments of six months, or plan a six-month-long project, with this timeline template specifically designed for half-year-long projects. List your start and end dates and their durations, and compare them against other project tasks to get an accurate picture of how your project is progressing.

3-Month Project Timeline Template

Download a 3-Month Project Timeline Template for PowerPoint | Google Slides  

Use this presentation-ready, 3-month project timeline template to keep track of quarterly project progress, and share it with team members and other project stakeholders. The template enables you to list each task and show month-by-month progression towards completion. Use the drag-and-drop start and end-date bar charts to set task durations, and provide a status of each project’s task progress and percentage of completion. 

Download free PowerPoint project timeline templates to help ensure your team is on track.

Multiple Project Timeline Template

Download a Multiple Project Timeline Template for Microsoft Word | Google Docs

Track multiple projects’ progress across a customizable timeline with this multiple project timeline template. Create tasks for each individual project, and extend or shorten task duration with the drag-and-drop feature. The template also includes a way to add color-coded status (e.g., planning, approved, development) and risk level (high, medium, and low) so any project sponsor or team member can see how the project is doing at a glance.

Construction Project Timeline Template

Download a Construction Project Timeline Template for Excel | Google Sheets

Use this construction-specific project timeline template to schedule all your construction project’s deliverables in chronological order. The template includes editable example construction tasks (e.g., demo prep, framing, electrical) to show how you can schedule each task sequentially and keep the whole construction project moving. Plus, the built-in Gantt chart provides a visual record of each task’s due date, duration, and status.

IT Project Timeline Template

Download an IT Project Timeline Template for Excel | Google Sheets

With this project timeline template designed for IT projects, you can list sprints, assign each one to a specific team member, and track their progress. Maintain visibility into any project changes as you view the status of each sprint to ensure your time-sensitive project conforms to the proposed timeline.

What Is a Project Timeline Template?

A project timeline template is a tool that displays the project schedule, including individual tasks, key milestones, and due dates. Use the template to plan your project, and to keep team members and other stakeholders up to date on progress. 

Project managers, project sponsors, team members, and clients know that having an accurate project plan is crucial for ensuring that you proactively define the project’s objectives and goals, anticipate individual project tasks, as well as how you will implement the project. While a project plan defines all project work and the individuals who will complete it, a project timeline puts all of this information into a visually dynamic, chronological format so that you can better track and manage your project. 

Project timeline templates also include your project’s key milestones, task owners, start and end dates, and individual task statuses. A thorough project timeline template provides project managers, team members, and project sponsors with phase-by-phase and task-by-task details and their current – and collective – status, so that the project can be successfully completed on time. 

While project timeline templates may vary, most of them include the following components: 

• Project Name: Enter the name of the project. 
• Project Manager: List the name of the project manager ultimately responsible for managing project day-to-day tasks and ensuring successful project delivery.  
• Start Date: Set the project start date. 
• End Date: Set the project end date. 
• Phase Title: Enter a name for each phase or stage of your project timeline. 
• Task Name: List each individual task.  
• Assigned To: List the team member responsible for completing each individual project task. 
• Task Start and End Dates: Set the date the task owner is scheduled to begin and finish working on each individual task. 
• Duration: Review the task duration to ensure that the task owner has sufficient time to complete it. 
• Status: Provide the status for each individual task (e.g., not started, in progress, on hold, complete, etc.).  

Additionally, some project timeline templates include the following additional components: 

• Milestones: List the project’s key milestones. 
• Project Scope: Provide brief details of the scope of the project (i.e., product or project features).  
• Objectives and Goals: List the project’s key goals or objectives.   
• Task ID: Provide a unique task ID for each project task for easier task-by-task status tracking. 
• Department: List the department responsible for each project phase or individual task.  To keep track of the time spent by individual teams or department members, use one of our free timesheet templates.
• At Risk: Mark tasks that are at risk of not being completed on time, and whether this jeopardizes project delivery.  
• Sprint: If your project timeline is structured according to Agile sprints , enter the name or number of the sprint.  
• Project Notes: Provide any notes about schedule, budget, resources, risks, or other issues that may affect successful project delivery.
• Status Key: Provide a color-coded status for each project phase, feature, or task (e.g., planning, approved, development, launched). 
• Risk Level: Provide a level for any particular project phase, feature, or task that is at risk of not being completed (e.g., high, medium, low).

Create Powerful Project Timelines with Smartsheet for Project Management

From simple task management and project planning to complex resource and portfolio management, Smartsheet helps you improve collaboration and increase work velocity -- empowering you to get more done. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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Timeline Templates

18 free timeline templates (excel, powerpoint, word, psd).

Most projects usually involve the use of a timeline diagram, a tool that provides an easy-to-comprehend history of the project. Based on this, the readers can determine ongoing patterns and trends. The timeline also plays a major part in project management. For instance, it’s used to illustrate deadlines, milestones, and other important events and dates over the duration of the project. It clearly ties the goals of the project to the important dates. In addition, it also allows project managers to make annotations on the document to show the actual progress of the project.

What is a timeline template?

A timeline is a presentation of the chronological sequence of events along a line that allows the readers to quickly understand the relationships between the different events. Some timeline examples have a tabular chronology, while others have yearly paragraphs. Some are even purely conceptual.

Timelines are frequently used to illustrate infographics by combining graphic images and text to make better presentations. Timeline templates are visual aids that show the passage of time and can include diagrams, visual elements, and text.

Types of timeline templates

To make a timeline, you can choose from many kinds of templates. Before choosing the template to use, it’s important to consider the data that you want to visualize. For instance, do you plan to create a history timeline template or a wedding timeline template? Should the events in the timeline strictly flow in chronological order? The type of timeline depends on the data. Here are the various types to choose from:

• Gantt chart . Also called a horizontal bar chart, this is a template that visualizes how you will keep track of a project. The cascading horizontal bar chart contains all of the project tasks and how they’re related to each other as the project moves forward. Many project managers consider this as the ideal timeline when they need to coordinate dates, durations, resources, and tasks, whether the scale is big or small.
• Vertical bar chart. This proves useful in keeping track of time against amounts like a timeline that measures money collected for an event or even growth. Over time, the vertical bars will grow taller as the amounts of money increase on the y-axis. The upward movement helps you visualize the gain quickly. A vertical bar chart timeline is very useful for finance teams and business analysts.
• Chronological chart. This is a timeline that visualizes the events in a specific arrangement or succession order over a given time period. The events in the chart should follow a precise order, starting with the first event on the left side and the most recent ones on the right. This is an effective chart to display historical events.
• Static timeline. Both the chronological and vertical charts are types of static timelines since the information they provide doesn’t change or move. Since you present the data at the same time, there’s no need to analyze an entry to get more details.
• Interactive timeline. Also called a dynamic timeline, the chart enables the readers to scroll, change, or move through the data in real-time. It also allows for interaction with complex information to discover new insights. This is an ideal chart for projects that last for several months as it involves huge amounts of data to analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns and trends.

Timeline Examples

Who can use timeline templates?

Because of its ease in sharing data, a timeline graphic is now used in several industries. A visual timeline, for instance, shares more details with just one look compared to blocks of text. It’s a valuable tool in event management, business and marketing, and project planning. A timeline helps in the visualization of complex data. From business scenarios to historical events, it helps with visualization to make complex information easy to understand. Here are the people who can take advantage of timelines:

• Students and teachers. Because of their practicality, timelines have become an essential part of the classroom. They allow students to actively engage in the learning process while making it easier for them to memorize dates and events, understand information, and visualize the chronological order of historical trends or events.
• Project managers. Timelines are very useful in project management for team members to visually keep track of projects and see how each event relates to the others. Take, for instance, a Gantt chart, one if not the most popular timelines used by project managers. With this chart, they can plan all of the tasks so that complex projects become easier to organize and manage.
• Business analysts. Using interactive timelines, analysts can sift through large amounts of complex information to uncover useful insights. This enables them to easily identify patterns and trends and present these in a more comprehensible way. They can also use timeline templates to map out the beginning to end of a project by creating an analyst calendar.
• Historians. When studying history, timelines also prove their worth because historians can use them to illustrate the changes that occur over time and effectively show the chronology of certain events. From this, historians can use timelines to show what happens, when, and how much time passes between events.

How do I create a timeline?  

Creating a timeline is possible in different ways. If you want to make a graphical representation of a sequence of tasks or events, use a SmartArt graphic timeline. After creating the draft of the timeline, you can add more details, change colors and layouts, or apply preferred styles. Here are tips for making a timeline template:

• Decide what the timeline will show.  Timelines must have titles that identify the project or event they intend to illustrate. Place the appropriate title at the top of the template.
• Create the timeline. Decide which part you want to create first. If it’s for a project, specify the date when the work will start and when it should get completed. For this, create a horizontal bar in the middle of the template. Add the start and end dates of each event starting from the one on the left.
• Decide the timeline’s scale. Based on the total duration of the time to illustrate, divide the timeline into equal sections. Use small vertical lines or dashes and label them accordingly. For instance, if you have a timeline that covers one year, divide it into months. Divide one day into hours and so on.
• Missing time. If there’s a span of time with no activity, bypass one of the segments in the timeline to indicate a time gap.
• Add the events. Whenever events occur or tasks get completed, indicate these using small points or circles along the line. Connect a vertical line and extend it from the bottom or top depending on how much space there is in the template. At the end of the vertical line, draw a box and write the name of the task or event to complete.
• Add visual elements. Adding graphics and images to illustrate events is a good idea, as these add clarity while increasing the visual appearance of the timeline.

Timeline Samples

How to make a timeline template Microsoft Word

  Another alternative to creating a timeline is through Microsoft Word. This program shows you how to create professional timelines using the popular text processing tool. Here are the steps:

Launch the program

• There is a choice to either open a new document or an existing template.
• In the menu bar, click the Insert tab > SmartArt . This gives the option to select from various SmartArt Graphics. To create a timeline, select one of the templates and click Process > Simple timeline .
• Try different templates and styles to see which one is best.

Add the data

• After selecting the Simple timeline, you will see 3 placeholders and milestones.
• Click the Milestones [Text] or use the text pane. Using the latter allows you to add more milestones easily.
• Click Enter for to add more bullet points. Word automatically adjusts the font size depending on how many events or how much text you input.
• The milestones are horizontally positioned on the axis with the same distance between them no matter how many dates you added.

Customize the timeline

• One excellent feature of Word is that it offers several ways to style the timeline. The way you set font properties, colors, and more will affect the whole overview of the timeline. A client may request to have their font type and brand colors on the timeline template. You can adjust all of these details easily with just a couple of clicks.
• SmartArt also offers various templates to change the appearance of the timeline. In the menu bar, click SmartArt Design and open the menu for SmartArt Styles to browse the other options.

Adjust the font properties for the events

• With Word, you can change the font style, font color, font weight, and other properties using Rich Text Formatting . Choose the text you want to change and use the Rich Text Editor to change the fonts.

Change the positions and colors of the milestones

• Select any of the milestones on your timeline by clicking on the right button of the mouse. This opens a menu from which you can edit the outline color, fill color, and other properties of the milestone selected.
• Word also allows you to use Drag and Drop to move the positions of the milestones, horizontally or vertically. Repositioning milestones closer to their descriptive texts makes it easier to make the right connections between the images and text.

How to use project timeline template in Excel

A project timeline template is a visual representation of the chronological sequence of tasks or events in a project. It involves a series of tasks assigned to teams or individuals that need to get completed within a set time period. With Excel, you can create a timeline template using two methods:

Use SmartArt tools

Using SmartArt tools is the best option when you need to create a basic and simple project timeline in Excel. Here are the steps to do this:

• Click Insert tab on the task panel at the top.
• Click Insert a SmartArt Graphic.
• Look for the Basic Timeline chart type and click it.
• Edit the text as needed to reflect the information in the project timeline.

You can add as many fields as needed in the SmartArt text box. Do this by hitting Enter in the text pane to open a dialog box. Excel also allows you to change the SmartArt timeline layout after inserting text. You can change it to a basic bar chart, line chart, or a stacked bar chart.

Try experimenting with the different color schemes for charts in the SmartArt Design tab. Using the SmartArt graphic tool is ideal for high-level project timelines where you can display all of the significant milestones of the project. But this might not be enough to display all of the activities and tasks that lead up to those milestones. In such a case, you can opt for the second method.

Scatter plot chart

These are charts that show very complex data points at a single glance. To do this, first lay the basis for the chart by creating a data table with the basic information that may include due dates, milestone or task names, priority levels, and other relevant information. When adding the dates to the timeline, make sure to format the cells to show the correct format for the date. Generate a scatter plot chart by following these steps:

• Click and drag the data table to select it
• Click Insert in the top menu
• Click Scatter chart icon
• Choose the layout of the chart

After creating the scatter plot chart, start formatting it to show the data of your timeline clearly. Here are the steps:

• Select the chart
• Click Chart Design on the task pane on top
• Click Add Chart Element icon
• Add a Data Label and Data Callout
• Edit the title of the chart

Continue experimenting to customize the chart further. Although this chart is a bit more intricate than SmartArt graphics, it might not be the best choice for horizontal timelines.

More Templates

Birthday Calendars

Staffing Plan Templates

Payment Schedule Templates

Appointment Schedule Templates

Time Blocking Templates

Action Plan Templates

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• Project management |
• How to create a project timeline in 7 s ...

How to create a project timeline in 7 simple steps

Wondering how to transform your project management game? Learn how to streamline your tasks and dependencies by creating an adaptable project management timeline that's suitable for any industry and profession.

Fret no more. This guide offers a comprehensive example of how to create a project timeline suitable for any professional, regardless of their job title, industry, or department. Follow these steps and learn how to build project timelines that put you in the driver’s seat and build your own project timeline template .

Discover the future of workflow automation

Leverage AI-driven solutions to unleash your team's potential with dynamic workflows that adapt to ever-changing business needs and drive company-wide success.

What is a project timeline?

A project timeline is an important project management tool that visually represents the schedule and details the sequence and duration of tasks. It breaks down a project into parts and supports effective workload management by using integrations such as a work breakdown structure (WBS). A project timeline is more than a static calendar; it functions as a dynamic guide that adapts to the project's developing needs, ensuring that goals are completed quickly and within anticipated timescales, whether in a major enterprise project or a small business initiative.

How to create a project timeline

Creating a project timeline is a structured process that lays the foundation for successful project execution. It begins with defining the project’s scope and objectives.

A good timeline not only displays tasks in chronological order but also incorporates critical elements like task dependencies, resource allocation, and milestones. 

This is where the functionality of the timeline comes into play. It should provide a clear, visual representation of the project’s flow and allow for easy tracking and updates. The timeline should be both comprehensive and flexible, able to adapt to changes while keeping the project on track.

1. Create a project brief

To keep all project stakeholders aligned on the plan, every project should start with a project brief . It serves as a roadmap and is a way to explain big picture details, like the purpose, goals, milestones, and vision of the overall project. Here are a few questions to answer in your brief:

What are your goals for the project, both internally and externally? What are the project deliverables?

Which internal and external stakeholders are a part of the project? What are their roles?

What is the timeframe for the project? What are the most important dates?

What is the project scope ? Do you have a project scope statement?

What are the key milestones of the project?

Let’s put this step into practice. You’re responsible for planning this year’s client appreciation dinner. Your personal goal for the event is to be as organized, productive, and efficient as possible . You’re confident you can do it, and understand it all starts by putting together a cohesive brief for your event. Your answers to the four questions listed above are:

What are your project goals, both internally and externally?

The internal goal is to plan a high-impact client event under $15,000. The external goal is to achieve a 50% RSVP rate and 80% attendance rate.

Which internal and external stakeholders are a part of the project?

The internal stakeholders are the event’s planning committee (John, Sam, Tara, Linda), the VP of Client Success, and the Marketing team. Externally, the stakeholders include all current clients, and certain vendors (catering company, event venue, etc.).

What is the time frame for the project?

The project planning kicks off on January 15, and the event will happen on August 30.

Which tasks should be considered project milestones?

Publishing the registration page, securing the venue, and signing certain vendors.

Once you have your project brief and goals outlined, you’ll be ready to work backwards and figure out all of the steps you need to take to get there, and you can start creating a project timeline.

2. List your to-dos

In order to have a successful project timeline, you’ll need to create a list of everything that will need to happen throughout the project planning process, all the way to your final deliverable, whether it is a report or an event. Think both big and small in terms of steps. Any tasks that will help you get your project completed on time and on budget should go on this list.

At this point, don’t worry too much about the order of all of your steps or when you need to get them done—we’ll cover that later.

For example, the breakdown for our client appreciation dinner might look like this:

Write an event plan

Finalize budget

Confirm event venue

Select catering

Choose event theme

Design creative concepts for event

Set up an RSVP page

Send invitations

Advertise event

Finalize presentations

Prepare all event collateral and swag

Create a day-of checklist

For longer or more complex steps, break them into smaller, easy-to-digest subtasks. Not only will it help you figure out the true scope of a step, but it’ll also ensure you don’t forget any small details and make tackling it more manageable.

In our event example, to make the "Select catering" step less overwhelming, we would split this part of the project into a digestible task list:

Create a list of possible caterers

Get quotes from each caterer

Compare quotes and menus

Meet with top picks

Choose caterer

Finalize contract

3. Estimate how long each step will take

Once you have a comprehensive list of every step in your project, you’ll allocate an amount of time each will take to complete. When doing this, balance giving your team enough time to get project tasks finished and staying within your overall time frame. Once you know how much time each task will take, you’ll be able to properly plan and sequence each task to create a project roadmap.

Continuing on with our client appreciation event example, let’s take the “Select catering” step, along with each of its subtasks, and estimate how much time the smaller tasks will take, in chronological order.

Select catering (9 weeks)

Create a list of possible caterers (1 week)

Get quotes from each caterer (3 weeks)

Compare quotes and menus (1 week)

Meet with top picks (2 weeks)

Choose caterer (1 week)

Finalize contract (1 week)

Based on our time projections, the process of selecting a catering company will take a total of nine weeks. By working backwards, you can determine when you need to start on this particular step and fill in your project timeline with actual dates.

4. Map out dependencies

As you’re running a project, some steps can be worked on simultaneously—especially if different teammates are responsible for each of the overlapping tasks. However, others cannot be started or completed until another step is finished. In other words, some steps are dependent on others getting completed first. For instance, you can’t order food before you’ve selected the caterer. This is one of the many reasons why a timeline is so important. Visually seeing each step, how the steps overlap, and the amount of time each one takes will keep you on course.

This is also the time to figure out who’s responsible for each step. Assigning who’s responsible for what to every part of the project early on will help you spot and adjust timing or resource conflicts, and avoid future surprises and delays. In Step 6, you’ll learn how to share your project timeline with those involved, making responsibilities crystal clear.

One of the tasks for our example event is to send out invitations. While this particular step seems like an easy one, there are several other things that need to happen before we can even think about sending invitations. The invites must be designed, and we can’t design them until a theme has been chosen for our event. One task needs to occur before another starts. For example:

Event theme (Event Planning team) → Design concepts (Linda) → Choose design (Event Planning team) → Create invitation (Linda) → Send invitations (Tara)

It’s worth the time to map out each dependency and the sequence (or order) of each task. You’ll quickly start to see your project puzzle coming together. Deciding who will do what is critical as well. Who will be working on finalizing the event theme? Who will design the invitations? Don’t wait until it is time for a task to start before assigning it to someone—get everything ironed out early to avoid conflicts or hiccups.

The good news is the invitation process and catering selections can happen at the same time, which will be shown on our project timeline.

5. Create your timeline

Are you beginning to visualize what your project timeline could look like ? While it’s not practical to keep that image (and all those tasks and due dates) in your head, it is realistic to get them down on paper (or on screen). Your first instinct might be to open up an Excel spreadsheet or Microsoft presentation—but wait. Since neither were designed to plan or manage projects, you’ll run into some challenges you could avoid by choosing a better tool .

Instead, opt for a project management tool that’s designed to build and manage project timelines —like Asana. Not only will it save you time drawing your timeline (since you won’t have to attempt to hack merge cells and add formulas to turn a spreadsheet into a project timeline), it will allow you to continue managing your timeline after the project kickoff. Dedicated project management software allows you to easily adapt your timeline as you work, and update your stakeholders on changes and progress in real time.

With the right tool, your timeline will be tied to your underlying work and will always stay up to date. It can be the difference between a project running on track and one going haywire.

How to create a timeline in Asana

Use Asana’s Timeline feature to create your own project schedule :

Enter all of your project steps as tasks in a list

Add start and end dates to each task

Add a task owner for each one

Draw dependencies between tasks

Click "Timeline" view to see your list translated into a visual timeline.

Tip: If you’ve already created your plan in a spreadsheet, you can quickly import it into Asana using our CSV importer integration , and skip to step four.

Project timeline templates to get you started

The easiest way to set up a project timeline quickly is to start with a project template . Below are a couple of project templates, created by Asana, that you can use now. Each type of project starts as a List View, but you can click the "Timeline" tab to convert it into a Timeline:

Product marketing launch template

Event planning template

Product roadmap template

General project plan template

6. Share it with stakeholders

Remember when you added a list of all project stakeholders to your brief at the very beginning of this process? Now that you’ve built your timeline, it’s important to share it with everyone involved. We can promise they will be thrilled to see how clear your plan is. The easier you make their part of the project, the more kudos will come your way throughout the process.

When you use a project management tool to build your timeline, sharing it is quick and seamless. Forget emails and multiple docs—in no time, your stakeholders will know who’s doing what by when.

For the client appreciation event, we will want to share our timeline with everyone involved in the entire project, not just those who have immediate responsibilities. At any time, someone will be able to track their part of the project and its dependencies without having to ping you for information.

7. Manage and adapt as you go

If you’ve ever worked on any project, you know things don’t always go as planned. However, when you’re prepared to adapt, changes don’t seem so difficult to handle. Timelines aren’t just great for planning; they will also help you adjust as delays or changes inevitably happen.

Moving tasks around doesn’t have to be daunting or disrupt the entire project. If one part of the project runs into a delay, as the project owner, you will have clarity on the impact of the rest of the project. Then, you’ll be empowered to move things around accordingly so the overall project can still move forward productively.

As The Balance Careers notes, project changes can be managed within their own specific steps, but once the change is final, it’s time to update your timeline. Because timelines go out of date quickly when plans change, relying on a project management tool , rather than email or spreadsheets, offers a major benefit. As the project owner, it’s your responsibility to communicate to all stakeholders what the single source of truth is (your timeline) and make sure it’s always updated.

Take immediate action. As soon as the change is confirmed, update your timeline to reflect it.

Notify stakeholders. Anyone that is affected by the change to your project timeline should understand how it impacts them and be able to visually see the change on the project timeline.

Determine the impact. Once your timeline is updated, you’ll be able to see if there are time periods that are overcrowded and stakeholders that have too many tasks. Can you move a task to ensure more time? Can someone else take over that responsibility or lend a hand?

To wrap up our event example, let’s say you managed to choose a caterer for the client appreciation dinner. You’re about to finalize the contract when a call comes in that the catering company double-booked themselves. Unfortunately, you must find a new catering company.

With a timeline, it's easy to adjust due dates for any task or any team members that are impacted by this change. The positive part of this challenge is that we’ve already gone through several of the initial tasks and can see that reflected on the timeline. While this is a frustrating problem, it feels more manageable because our timeline has kept us organized and on track.

Types of project timelines

Project timelines are as diverse as the projects themselves. The reason for this variety lies in the distinct nature of each project, where factors like scope, complexity, industry, and team size dictate the most suitable timeline format. This diversity ensures that every project can have a timeline tailored to its specific needs.

Choosing the right type of project timeline is an important step in project management. The key is to assess the project’s requirements and consider factors like: 

Project duration

Level of detail needed

Team's working style 

For instance, projects requiring close monitoring of deadlines might benefit from a Gantt chart, while those emphasizing flexibility might opt for a Kanban timeline. Additionally, the availability of project timeline software and tools should also be considered to ensure compatibility and ease of use.

Knowing you've selected the right type of timeline often comes down to its effectiveness in project execution. A suitable timeline will streamline the planning process, facilitate clear communication among team members, and provide a realistic overview of the project’s progress. 

If the timeline allows for easy identification of bottlenecks , supports effective time management , and aligns with the team’s workflow, it's likely a good fit for the project.

Gantt chart timeline

A Gantt chart is a popular project timeline tool that provides a visual overview of tasks scheduled over time. It helps teams see the start and end dates of project phases, helping with time management and identifying potential bottlenecks.

For example, a Gantt chart can be used to manage deadlines and identify potential delays in a construction project by outlining stages such as design, procurement, and construction.

Vertical chart timeline

This timeline is a variant of the traditional Gantt chart, displaying tasks along a vertical line. It's effective for smaller projects or when you need a concise list of tasks without detailed scheduling.

In event planning, such as organizing a conference, a vertical timeline can efficiently display the sequence of tasks like venue booking, speaker confirmation, and marketing.

Historical timeline

Particularly useful in educational or retrospective projects, a historical timeline outlines key events in chronological order. When dealing with complex projects, this format can help streamline the visualization of project phases.

A historical timeline, for instance, could be used to help with the educational component of a museum exhibit project by listing important historical events or eras in chronological order.

Kanban timeline

Kanban timelines, inspired by Kanban boards , focus on the progress of tasks from "to-do" to "done." They're excellent for teams emphasizing teamwork and agile methodologies, where tasks move through different stages.

For example, software development teams often use a Kanban board to track the progress of features from conception to implementation. 

Critical Path Method (CPM)

The Critical Path Method is a more sophisticated approach that identifies the sequence of interdependent tasks that affect the project's timeline. It's pivotal in complex projects where time tracking and precise planning are key.

In a big manufacturing project, for instance, CPM can identify and keep track of important steps like design, production, and quality control to make sure the job is finished on time.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

PERT is similar to CPM but focuses more on the time each task takes. It's beneficial in projects where time estimation is challenging by providing a project plan timeline that considers uncertainty.

In a research and development project, for example, PERT can be used to estimate the time needed for various phases like conceptualization, experimentation, and product testing.

Project timeline examples

Effective project timelines are more than just theoretical concepts; they are proven tools that drive successful project outcomes. They enable precise coordination, effective resource allocation, and timely completion of tasks.

A notable example is NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Project. The mission's success was heavily reliant on a meticulously crafted timeline, coordinating hundreds of scientists and engineers. This precise planning facilitated the rover's successful landing on Mars in 2012, demonstrating how a well-managed timeline can lead to extraordinary achievements in highly complex projects.

Project timeline example 1: Digital marketing campaign

In a digital marketing project, a Gantt chart timeline could delineate phases like market research, content creation, and campaign execution. The project team might use timeline tools to track critical tasks, ensuring effective time management when meeting campaign deadlines.

Scenario: A digital marketing team at a tech startup is launching a new app.

Market research phase: The team sets a two-week period for market analysis to understand the target audience.

Content creation phase: Over the next month, the team develops blog posts, social media content, and email campaigns.

Campaign execution: The final phase involves a six-week rollout of the created content across different platforms, with weekly reviews.

With the Gantt chart timeline, the team can see how each phase is progressing, adjust to delays in content creation, and move resources around more efficiently, all of which led to a successful campaign launch.

Project timeline example 2: Boutique retail business

For a small business project, a simple vertical chart timeline or a Kanban timeline might be more suitable. Businesses can use this kind of timeline to make project timelines that are easy to follow and keep up-to-date by showing important tasks like product development, marketing, and sales.

Scenario: A boutique clothing store is planning to expand its online presence.

Product development stage: Tasks include selecting new products and setting up an online store. Each task is moved from "to do" to "doing" to "done."

Marketing stage: This involves social media marketing and email marketing tasks, tracked similarly through the Kanban board.

Sales monitoring: The final stage tracks online sales performance and customer feedback.

Using a Kanban timeline, the store effectively handles its growth into e-commerce, keeping task management flexible and ensuring a smooth transition to online sales.

Common questions about project timelines

Knowing how to create a well-organized project timeline is a great first step towards understanding how to use this powerful tool, but you may still have a few more questions. You’re not alone. Here are answers to a couple common questions people have about project timelines:

What’s the difference between a timeline and a Gantt chart?

Gantt charts focus more on workflow and task dependencies. They are more linear and don’t account for changes or multiple things happening at once. Timelines are flexible and adapt easily to changes in project plans. They allow the workflow to be updated effortlessly. Both are organized as bar charts and serve as visual tools.

How can you track project progress, especially if you’re managing multiple projects?

This is tough to do in spreadsheets, but easier in a project management tool. There are multiple views to be able to see one project at a time, or you can manage multiple projects through a portfolio-style view .

In other words, you can visualize when you’ll have more time to work on specific tasks, and when you’re at capacity, you can adjust as needed to even out your entire team’s workload .

Create your next project timeline confidently

It’s not enough to just come up with a project plan. Determining how to execute it is just as important . Developing a timeline of how the plan will evolve is critical to the planning phase and also makes managing the project more efficient.

Using this step-by-step process for every project management timeline will keep you on task and less stressed. Try it out, adapt it to your business, and share it!

To take your project timelines even further, create your next timeline using Asana .

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15 Free Project Timeline Templates in Excel, Word, & ClickUp

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 14, 2024

Project timeline templates are an essential tool for any project manager who wants to keep their team aligned towards a common goal. There are multiple stakeholders to keep in mind, deadlines to meet, and budgets to manage.

You can find a wide range of templates that cater to different types of projects and team structures. Some are designed specifically for Agile project management, while others are better suited for more traditional waterfall projects. Some templates focus on visual representations of the project timeline , while others offer more detailed descriptions of each task and milestone.

We’ve shortlisted 15 free project timeline templates to better manage your tasks, timeline, resources, and objectives to achieve your goals.

Let’s get started!

What is a Project Timeline Template?

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A project timeline template is a resource used to outline the sequence of events in a project. It is used as a visual mapping tool to show how individual tasks, activities, and events should be organized to meet project goals. 

Timelines also allow for detailed estimation of the duration of key activities in a project plan . They can also be used to predict future events and anticipate potential resource needs!

Once you add each task to the project timeline in ClickUp, you can use it to calculate the start and end dates of the entire project. Additionally, you can compare milestones against the actual progress to identify any potential blockers and make plan revisions if necessary.

It’s crucial to keep all stakeholders in the loop regarding the timeline’s progression, so everyone has the same information. This level of transparency and communication can help foster a culture of accountability and improve overall project performance!

A good project timeline template offers a comprehensive overview of the project’s objectives, milestones, deadlines, and tasks. The template should be easy to understand and scalable, with color coding and different shapes representing different types of tasks.

Project timeline templates must adapt to various project management methodologies , including Agile and waterfall approaches, and allow the team to include task-specific details such as resources and estimated timeframes. ⏰

An effective project timeline template should promote collaboration and transparency, allowing for easy updates by all team members. This encourages communication and teamwork, creating a united effort toward a shared objective.

Other features of a good project timeline template include:

• Milestones : The template clearly defines milestones so teams can easily identify the most important tasks and project deliverables
• Flexibility : The timeline is flexible enough to accommodate changes in scope or unexpected obstacles as the project progresses
• Progress tracking : The timeline automatically tracks progress as tasks are completed and updated over time
• Resource allocation : The timeline offers the ability to allocate resources to tasks according to project needs
• Detailed deadlines : The timeline is detailed enough to include specific deadlines for each task and subtask
• Automation : Automation helps simplify the timeline management process, allowing team members to focus on the important work
• Cross-platform compatibility : A simple project timeline template works across multiple platforms, making it accessible to project stakeholders
• Task dependencies : The template shows the relationship between two or more tasks in a project where the completion of one task depends on the completion of another

We’ve compiled a list of 15 free project timeline templates in ClickUp, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to help you organize your tasks and activities. With these templates, you can customize your project timeline to fit the specific needs of your team and processes!

15 Project Timeline Templates to Get Your Projects on Schedule

Digital whiteboards are visual tools for project planning and organization . One of their most valuable features is the ability to quickly and easily braindump and categorize the major activities involved in a project. This can help project managers and teams to develop a clear and comprehensive understanding of the project’s scope, timeline, and resource requirements. 🧑‍💻

The number of activities included in a project timeline will depend on the size and complexity of the project. For small projects, this list may only include a few key activities, while larger projects may require dozens of activities to be fully planned out .

Regardless of the project’s size, creating a project timeline on a digital whiteboard allows the project team to break down the project into manageable components and identify any potential roadblocks or dependencies.

For remote teams, ClickUp’s Project Timeline Template is particularly useful because it provides a centralized location for all project-related information. Instead of relying on email threads or separate documents to track project progress, team members can access the timeline and see updates in real time!

The ClickUp Gantt Project Timeline Template is a perfect tool to manage new and ongoing projects that span for a long period of time. The template provides project teams with a daily, monthly, and yearly process overview, making it easy to track progress and forecast plans.

The daily view monitors the day-to-day work. The monthly view provides an overview of the progress made in a month, allowing teams to call out any potential roadblocks. The yearly view offers a high-level perspective of the entire project, helping businesses to identify long-term trends and plan accordingly. 📈

By using the Gantt timeline template, businesses can improve their project management process, streamline operations, and boost productivity.

Learn the differences between a Gantt chart and a timeline !

The ClickUp Marketing Project Timeline Template is a powerful tool for marketing teams looking to streamline their workflow and manage their campaigns and projects more effectively. One of the main benefits of this template is that it allows teams to build repeatable timelines that can be easily adapted to any marketing campaign or project. 🌐

This template will help promote consistency in marketing campaigns and projects by organizing custom project views:

• Timeline view : Start and end dates of marketing activities or important meetings grouped by quarter
• Box view : Marketing project managers, team members, partners, and their assigned activities
• List view : Different marketing activities grouped by quarter
• Board view : Different marketing activities grouped by status

Streamline processes, including content creation, promotion, reviews, and launches—all within one place. It provides a consistent structure and branding for materials and can be used to quickly create similar versions of content depending on the specific needs of a project.

A blank timeline is an excellent tool for planning any project or event where the sequence of activities is essential. It allows you to outline the necessary steps and visualize the timeline of your project, providing you with a clear overview of the tasks and deadlines involved.

The ClickUp Fillable Timeline Template takes this a step further with detailed Custom Fields, so everyone sees the most important information in one view! Custom Fields allow teams to add relevant details to your timelines, such as task descriptions, due dates, assignees, and major milestones.

We’ve included Custom Fields to help speed up your creation process:

• Days (Suggested Formula)
• Allocated Days
• Task Completion
• Actual Cost
• Project Phase
• Allocated Budget

ClickUp’s Project Timeline Whiteboard Template features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to easily organize sticky notes, objects, and other items.

This template is perfect for a team who needs to collaborate with cross-functional partners on complex projects. This could include designers, copywriters, developers, product managers, and other stakeholders. This makes it easier for cross-functional partners to understand the tasks involved in the project and to identify their specific roles and responsibilities.

With clear requirements in place, team members can focus their efforts on specific tasks and avoid wasting time on unnecessary or irrelevant work. This helps to reduce the risk of miscommunications and misunderstandings, which can lead to delays or rework!

The Creative Project Timeline Template by ClickUp is an effective tool for organizing and managing creative projects of any size or level of complexity. This template offers a structured framework that allows for the clear visualization of project milestones and critical tasks, providing an organized and streamlined approach to project management. 🎨

Whether you are working on a small-scale creative project or a large, complex initiative, the template is designed to explore any idea. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can quickly and easily create a detailed timeline that highlights important milestones and tasks, ensuring that everyone involved in the project is aware of the project’s progress and key deadlines.

The ClickUp Software Rollout Project Timeline Template gives development teams the tools to collaborate and plan their software rollout timelines. With the ability to create visual representations of tasks, timelines, and dependencies, everyone can easily identify critical tasks and progress in real-time.

Additionally, the intuitive drag-and-drop features allow teams to rapidly move and organize their cards, making adjustments to their rollout timeline as necessary. This agility lets teams adapt quickly to changes in project scope or timeline, so all tasks are completed on schedule. 🗓️

Bonus: Build timelines with timeline software !

ClickUp’s Roadmap Template is designed to manage all of your timelines and production stages in one centralized location. It comes with pre-built Views, Custom Statuses, and Custom Fields for personalized project management.

This template not only provides a macro-level view of your project’s vision and direction but also allows you to track progress, surface real-time insights, and align work, teams, and individuals.

The Business Roadmap Template by ClickUp is built to help you create a timeline that outlines your company’s major objectives and strategies and keep you on track to hit your long-term goals.

This template comes with pre-built Views, such as Timeline and List view, to visualize your project objectives in an organized way.

ClickUp’s Simple Gantt Chart Template is a remarkable tool for visualizing your project timeline. This resource offers a comprehensive overview of the various stages involved in your project, with a particular emphasis on identifying dependencies and potential obstacles before they occur.

The Excel project timeline template highlights important milestones and critical tasks along the way. You can easily identify key deadlines, dependencies, and potential delays in your project plan. This level of organization and clarity is essential for effective project management, allowing you to allocate resources, manage expectations, and stay on track to meet your project goals.

By breaking down your project into specific milestones and critical tasks, you can easily see the big picture of your project and make informed decisions about how to allocate resources and manage risks.

Learn how to create a timeline in Excel !

The PowerPoint timeline template is a tool for a project manager to visually represent the key milestones in a project schedule. This can help to clarify the project timeline and make it easier for team members or stakeholders to understand the overall plan.

This simple timeline template offers a selection of infographic icons. The icons can be used to represent various stages of the project or key tasks. Adding a visual element that can help to make the timeline more engaging and informative!

Microsoft Word project timeline template is a document to input your event’s milestones, deadlines, and dependencies to create a project timeline. The template also allows for customization, with the option to add elements and images so your timeline reflects your event’s theme.

With a pre-designed template, you can easily create a comprehensive plan to cover all aspects of the event, from logistics to marketing to budgeting. The Word template includes sections for important details such as the event name, date, location, and project phase.

An Excel Gantt Chart Timeline Template is a powerful tool that helps in project management by providing a visual representation of tasks scheduled over time. It’s a type of bar chart that shows the start and end times for each task in a project schedule, allowing you to track the status of tasks as work progresses.

The template allows you to manage complex projects and better organize multiple projects simultaneously. It simplifies complex projects into a weekly or monthly timeline, making it easier to understand and follow. The tasks in the chart are usually categorized using a work breakdown structure, which further aids in keeping track of the project’s progress.

This timeline template is a user-friendly tool designed to help you visually map out project milestones in an easy-to-understand timeline diagram.

The template allows you to list your project milestones and creates a visual representation of them, highlighting their statuses. It’s a milestone-driven tool that provides a clear illustration of your project’s primary events. The template is highly customizable, allowing you to adjust colors, styles, and fonts according to your project theme or brand.

Stay Ahead of Schedule With ClickUp’s Powerful Project Timelines

Creating the right project timeline template is key to staying organized and on track. Whether you prefer a timeline, a Gantt chart, or a digital whiteboard, documenting your project adds structure and clarity to your project.

ClickUp offers advanced prioritization features, so you can customize priorities based on urgency, importance, or any other criteria that fit your team’s needs. Plus, with ClickUp’s intelligent dependency-path tracking, you can easily make adjustments with a simple drag-and-drop action. ⚡️

Get started in ClickUp for free today!

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How to Create a Marketing Timeline in 6 Steps (+ Templates)

Written by: Christopher Jan Benitez

Developing a marketing strategy is a step towards generating more sales and revenue for your business.

But implementing it is a different matter altogether.

Keeping an eye on your strategy’s campaigns means knowing who’s assigned to each task and project, when they need to complete their responsibilities, and how to proceed with each task.

You can’t do this without a proper system in place, which is why a marketing timeline is in order.

This post discusses what a marketing timeline is, its importance, and how to create one for your organization.

It then shows you different Visme templates to choose from to help you create your timelines much faster.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit marketing timeline templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

What is a marketing timeline, why is a marketing timeline important, how to create a marketing timeline, 20 marketing timeline templates to download, create your marketing timeline now with visme.

A marketing timeline is a visual schedule containing all your marketing plan 's projects, events, campaigns, and activities. Each is organized according to the calendar year's day or month of completion.

Developing a marketing timeline for your organization is vital for the following reasons:

Communication and Collaboration

It enables you to share the project deadlines or milestones at a specific time with your team, people in your organization and stakeholders. This allows them to craft promotional campaigns and make key decisions based on the events that transpire and was accomplished within that period.

Organization and Accountability

From your timeline, you can assign team members who can complete each task expertly. Since everybody can see the names attached to each responsibility, the assigned members are given a sense of pride and must take ownership of the task.

Work Ahead of Time

Even if the event hasn’t occurred, your team can formulate their strategy of promoting the product or service in advance. If changes happen along the way, your team can simply tweak the strategy as they see fit. This way, they don’t waste time waiting for tasks to be completed before they make their move.

Each business requires the creation of a specific timeline that suits its needs. To help you come up with the right one for your organization, you must observe the following steps:

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1. Audit Your Current Workflows

Deconstruct the established marketing workflows in your organization. Doing so shows you how work gets done and approved by the team before they are handed to the next stage of your marketing funnel.

From here, identify inefficient workflow tasks that take too much time to complete. Then, find ways to make the processes more efficient or scrap these tasks in place of another task that lets you get more things done in less time.

By optimizing your workflows, you can have a more well-defined marketing process that enables you to complete all tasks in your proposed timeline faster.

2. List Your Marketing Goals

Next, you must identify what you wish to achieve with your upcoming marketing initiatives.

Examples include improving your website traffic , generating more highly qualified leads, and improving your social selling efforts .

With a new and improved workflow, coming up with campaign ideas based on your goals and implementing each should be much more accessible than ever.

At the same time, the goals don’t always have to be directly related to your campaigns.

For instance, you want to improve collaboration between your marketing and sales teams. Or you want your keep better track of the progress of members assigned to specific tasks in a project.

The marketing timeline you’ll create should be able to help you achieve your goals much faster. In addition, since everybody in the organization can view your timeline, they can stay updated with your product or campaign progress.

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3. Decide On Your Strategy

Once you’ve settled on goals to target within a certain period, it’s time to determine which strategy to take for reaching these objectives.

The marketing strategy includes principles such as the product to be marketed, budget, and steps that must be completed when developing and implementing your campaigns. You can then break down the campaign by quarter to help you assess the current progress and make necessary adjustments to improve its results.

When building your marketing strategy from the ground up, use any of Visme’s infographic templates .

Choose which among the templates you need to create the strategy, from presentation to explainer videos . Then simply swap out the text, images, and colors with your own using our drag-and-drop editor.

4. Identify the Type of Campaign

You must brainstorm ideas about which campaign to launch from your strategy.

It’s important to take your time crafting a campaign that aligns with your marketing strategy.

For growing your website traffic, you must consider your deadline and budget from your marketing budget.

If you want to see results fast, invest in paid advertising by bidding keywords to rank your landing pages. On the downside, you’ll have to keep spending to appear on top of search results.

On the other hand, search engine optimization (SEO) is another effective tactic to drive more high-quality traffic to your site. While it could take months before you eventually see the results, it’s not as costly as paid ads.

If you’re not working on a tight deadline, developing a content marketing campaign enables you to target keywords for each content piece you’ll publish on your site. This compounds greater traffic if implemented correctly.

This is just an example of what to consider when determining a campaign for your strategy.

You must approach thinking about your marketing campaign the same way as above to determine the best course of action.

5. Set Due Dates for Campaigns

With the campaigns in tow, set a due date for the completion of each.

You want the campaign duration to be reasonable enough that your team can confidently complete all its tasks. At the same time, your campaigns need to have a sense of urgency as you don’t want to take too much time getting each one done.

To help you fully understand how much time you need to complete each campaign, break it down according to tasks. Then, get feedback from your marketing team regarding how much time they need to finish each and schedule them in your timeline accordingly.

Collaborating with your staff allows you to be on the same page with everybody in the organization regarding the deliverables.

6. Measure Your Strategy’s Success

Just because team members are assigned for each task and project doesn’t mean you’ll leave them on their own.

You want to monitor how everyone is progressing along with the marketing timeline.

Check whether they are on time with their tasks or running behind and are having difficulty completing them. If the latter, determine why that’s the case and figure out ways to help your team catch up with their responsibilities.

It will help if you develop project management charts to give team members better direction on how and when they need to complete their tasks.

Ultimately, marketing campaigns are a team effort that requires help from everybody to get the job done. And a marketing timeline allows you to be mindful of the tasks that need more help than others.

Below are ready-to-use marketing timeline templates from Visme for you to choose from.

Simply edit your chosen template by including your custom text, graphics, and color to create your timeline in minutes.

To make the design process even faster, you can collaborate with your team members on the timeline’s design and the details.

Once finished, you can share the timeline with other Visme users in your organization so they can leave feedback on how to improve it. Or share it as a presentation to stakeholders and people in your organization to give them a clear idea of your marketing strategy.

1. Apple Logo Timeline Infographic

This is one of the many infographic templates that allow you to showcase your brand logo's changes over the years. It focuses on achieving a clean and minimalist look in your presentation, similar to what Apple strived and continues to strive for with its brand.

2. Design Process Timeline Infographic

This infographic enables you to run through your organization's entire design process and share it with your team for reference. You can also break down the tasks into different phases and descriptions.

3. History of Email Timeline Infographic

Sharing your company’s brief history gives your audience a good idea of where your organization came from and what it has achieved so far. This template helps you share your brand’s history in text and images with rich solid colors.

4. Coca-Cola Logo Evolution Timeline Infographic

Another template that lets you share your logo designs through the years, this one uses Coca-Cola as an example. Taking a cue from its red and white color scheme, present your company logos energetically and powerfully.

5. Voyager Mission Milestones Timeline Infographic

Showcasing your company milestones is a great way to show stakeholders and prospects your business’s accomplishments. This information template allows you to share them visually with its orange and white color scheme.

6. Website Design Project Timeline Infographic

Designing a website can be daunting if you don't prepare for it properly. This template lets you break down the design process into bite-sized steps from initial contact to launch and organize them according to week.

7. Modern Roadmap Infographic

A roadmap is an effective visual presentation that guides your audience along a continuous path of various touchpoints with images and text. This infographic template helps you create a roadmap for your marketing timeline broken down into tasks and activities.

8. Startup Consulting Firm Marketing Strategy Roadmap Infographic

This template is a variation of a roadmap infographic design. Instead of traversing through a path, this one shares with your team the strategies you implemented in the past, currently deploying as part of your campaign, and will roll out in the future.

9. Software Development Timeline Roadmap Infographic

If part of your marketing initiative is to share with people in your organization the product or software being developed, use this template. Discuss here the plans for the software, from brainstorming to launch, to keep them updated with its progress.

10. Subliminal Messages A Brief History Infographic

You can use this template to explain to your team the effectiveness of subliminal messaging in media through the years. Its understated design and simple colors make it perfect for organizations looking for a template that can communicate their ideas clearly.

11. Creative Timeline Infographic

Detail your brand's timeline in history using this simple and clear infographic template. Detail milestones your business achieved through the years to provide your audience with your brand’s accomplishment.

12. General Project Timeline Gantt Chart

Complement your marketing timeline with a Gantt chart using this template. It allows you to organize the tasks into phases and the months you must accomplish each year.

13. Launch an Online Store Timeline Infographic

If you're developing an e-commerce store from scratch, designing a visual timeline using this template allows you to stay organized through the entire process. Describe each step and present each one using graphics to communicate your plan to the team effectively.

14. History of Solar Technology Timeline Infographic

This template is a fun and easy way to present the history of a concept or your business. Its flat and solid colors and gradient background puts the text and graphics in the spotlight, allowing you to communicate your information more clearly to your audience.

15. Social Media Platform Timeline Infographic

This infographic template lets you present a short history of social media channels. Showing them when the platforms started allows you to establish their longevity and importance in your marketing campaign.

16. Product Design Process Timeline Infographic

This infographic gives your team a full view of the product design process. Identify the steps in the process and provide a short description of each. Doing so also informs everybody in marketing regarding the deliverables for the product design so they can prepare the tactics and strategy accordingly.

17. Customer Journey Map Timeline Infographic

Detail the customer journey for your brand to help you formulate a marketing plan that maximizes your product's or service's visibility to its intended audience. This infographic provides a blueprint for plotting your audience's journey from prospect to client.

18. Business Timeline Infographic

With this business timeline template, you can plan for your brand's achievements and milestones in the coming years based on the marketing strategy you have in place. This allows you to manifest expectations for your brand and motivate you to keep doing a great job.

19. Digital Marketing Timeline Infographic

If you are onboarding new members in your marketing department, this template lets you create a brief overview of the different tactics under the digital marketing banner. You can indicate the importance and value of each in your current marketing plan.

20. Crystal Diner Company Timeline Infographic

This timeline template lets you create a brief company overview to give your prospects or even new hires an idea of what your business is about. Start with your humble beginners and the changes you made to become this well-respected brand in your industry.

In preparation for your upcoming product or service launch, creating a marketing timeline is in order. With it, you can better control your marketing efforts by getting everybody working on their tasks on the same page.

While you’d think that creating a timeline is a lot of work, it isn’t with Visme. Using its free timeline maker lets you focus on laying down the projects and tasks for your marketing campaigns. This is possible thanks to its easy-to-use designer, allowing you to create professional-looking timelines without any design skills.

Check out Visme’s timeline maker and get started with your marketing timeline quickly.

Create effective marketing timelines faster in Visme

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About the Author

Christopher Jan Benitez is a freelance writer who specializes in digital marketing. His work has been published on SEO and affiliate marketing-specific niches like Monitor Backlinks, Niche Pursuits, Nichehacks, Web Hosting Secret Revealed, and others.

How To Write A Business Plan (2024 Guide)

Updated: Apr 17, 2024, 11:59am

Table of Contents

Brainstorm an executive summary, create a company description, brainstorm your business goals, describe your services or products, conduct market research, create financial plans, bottom line, frequently asked questions.

Every business starts with a vision, which is distilled and communicated through a business plan. In addition to your high-level hopes and dreams, a strong business plan outlines short-term and long-term goals, budget and whatever else you might need to get started. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to write a business plan that you can stick to and help guide your operations as you get started.

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Drafting the Summary

An executive summary is an extremely important first step in your business. You have to be able to put the basic facts of your business in an elevator pitch-style sentence to grab investors’ attention and keep their interest. This should communicate your business’s name, what the products or services you’re selling are and what marketplace you’re entering.

Ask for Help

When drafting the executive summary, you should have a few different options. Enlist a few thought partners to review your executive summary possibilities to determine which one is best.

After you have the executive summary in place, you can work on the company description, which contains more specific information. In the description, you’ll need to include your business’s registered name , your business address and any key employees involved in the business. 

The business description should also include the structure of your business, such as sole proprietorship , limited liability company (LLC) , partnership or corporation. This is the time to specify how much of an ownership stake everyone has in the company. Finally, include a section that outlines the history of the company and how it has evolved over time.

Wherever you are on the business journey, you return to your goals and assess where you are in meeting your in-progress targets and setting new goals to work toward.

Numbers-based Goals

Goals can cover a variety of sections of your business. Financial and profit goals are a given for when you’re establishing your business, but there are other goals to take into account as well with regard to brand awareness and growth. For example, you might want to hit a certain number of followers across social channels or raise your engagement rates.

Another goal could be to attract new investors or find grants if you’re a nonprofit business. If you’re looking to grow, you’ll want to set revenue targets to make that happen as well.

Intangible Goals

Goals unrelated to traceable numbers are important as well. These can include seeing your business’s advertisement reach the general public or receiving a terrific client review. These goals are important for the direction you take your business and the direction you want it to go in the future.

The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you’re offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit in the current market or are providing something necessary or entirely new. If you have any patents or trademarks, this is where you can include those too.

If you have any visual aids, they should be included here as well. This would also be a good place to include pricing strategy and explain your materials.

This is the part of the business plan where you can explain your expertise and different approach in greater depth. Show how what you’re offering is vital to the market and fills an important gap.

You can also situate your business in your industry and compare it to other ones and how you have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Other than financial goals, you want to have a budget and set your planned weekly, monthly and annual spending. There are several different costs to consider, such as operational costs.

Business Operations Costs

Rent for your business is the first big cost to factor into your budget. If your business is remote, the cost that replaces rent will be the software that maintains your virtual operations.

Marketing and sales costs should be next on your list. Devoting money to making sure people know about your business is as important as making sure it functions.

Other Costs

Although you can’t anticipate disasters, there are likely to be unanticipated costs that come up at some point in your business’s existence. It’s important to factor these possible costs into your financial plans so you’re not caught totally unaware.

Business plans are important for businesses of all sizes so that you can define where your business is and where you want it to go. Growing your business requires a vision, and giving yourself a roadmap in the form of a business plan will set you up for success.

How do I write a simple business plan?

When you’re working on a business plan, make sure you have as much information as possible so that you can simplify it to the most relevant information. A simple business plan still needs all of the parts included in this article, but you can be very clear and direct.

What are some common mistakes in a business plan?

The most common mistakes in a business plan are common writing issues like grammar errors or misspellings. It’s important to be clear in your sentence structure and proofread your business plan before sending it to any investors or partners.

What basic items should be included in a business plan?

When writing out a business plan, you want to make sure that you cover everything related to your concept for the business,  an analysis of the industry―including potential customers and an overview of the market for your goods or services―how you plan to execute your vision for the business, how you plan to grow the business if it becomes successful and all financial data around the business, including current cash on hand, potential investors and budget plans for the next few years.

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Free Timeline Infographics

Download free timeline infographics & google slides.

Download our creative Free Timeline Infographics to comprehensively present the project milestones and other business events. A timeline diagram is an interactive way to discuss the stages of a business process in time-based reference. Timeline diagrams help presenters communicate their plans effectively in counted stages with precise details. It can assist business professionals in demonstrating their execution or implementation plans in distinct steps, explaining the completion dates as well. We have created this free PowerPoint template with a set of timeline infographics for our users. They can download this template to use the infographics in their business or academic presentations. Students can use this template to display their study or career plans.

Scholars can use timeline diagram infographics to creatively explain their coaching session schedules. Professionals can also showcase the operational processes with these impressive infographic designs. Moreover, IT experts can share their networking protocols and new process installations using this slide layout. HR heads can showcase the hiring process timeline using this engaging infographic template. Our free PPT template has editable features; users can change them to fit their needs accurately. They can also modify the infographic icons relevant to their theme and preferences.

Our Free Timeline Infographics t emplate has different types of timelines. It includes horizontal, vertical, and curved timelines with graphical items to enhance the visual impact of the design. Users can explain multistep processes by choosing the most suitable infographic from the template. For instance, using our slide template, they can showcase the five-career business growth plans and eight staged roadmap timelines. The template comprises 30 unique timeline layouts compatible with all PowerPoint versions, Google Slides, and Keynote. Also, we have a wide range of color combinations in this set of PPT timelines. Download our free timeline infographics PowerPoint template and use it for your executive presentations. Try it today!

Alternatively, check our essential guide on making timelines , our complete collection of free PowerPoint templates and timeline templates for PowerPoint .

• 100% Editable PowerPoint Templates & Google Slides.
• Compatible with all major Microsoft PowerPoint versions, Keynote and Google Slides.
• Modern 16:9 Aspect Ratio.
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• New Templates every week.

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An entrepreneur is often needed to present business timelines to clients and employees to define about the projects undertaken or specify the business plan to be carried over time. Do you too need to create a business timeline and you are short of time? Well, you can anyday take to premium business keynote timeline template samples online to save time for you.

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