When it comes to project management, time, quality and cost are the only three elements that companies and organizations concentrate the most on. Quality of a project is hard to estimate before seeing the final project but it is possible to estimate the costs and time frame for completing the project. To make sure that time is in favor for the project team members, the important events or parts of the project are presented on a chart in the chronological order and this presentation is also known as timeline diagram.
Importance and benefits of Timeline Diagrams:
Besides providing the required results or final product to the client, the most important element about a project is the duration or time period in which it needs to be completed. When the finishing of a project on time is so important, the team members can’t lose track of time while working on the project. In order to simplify the entire process, the whole project is divided into several parts or steps and each step is shown on the timeline diagram along with required duration to complete it. This way it is easy to calculate the required time for the entire project by adding up the time for each part of the project.
If the time is in favor of the team, the can continue working on the project but if the timeline diagram shows that it needs more time to complete the project than initially expected, the team members and project manager have enough time to think of cutting some time short and completing the project on time. As this all happens before starting the actual project, this means that even if the project setup needs to be changed for timely completion, it can also be done with timeline diagrams.
Here is preview of a Free Sample Timeline Diagram Template created using MS Word,
Application of Timeline Diagrams in Business:
Due to the versatile nature of this technique of presenting data in a simple and easy manner, this tool is used in number of fields and areas including the business and education. In education, the timeline serves as the representation of the historical events in the chronological order so that the students can easily understand the manner in which those events happened. It is really easy to present the events and their duration or span on the same chart as the gaps on the timeline between the events represent the real duration or separation between the events.
The most important use or application of timeline diagrams is in project management. Businesses and organizations handle dozens of projects on regular basis and it is really important that when there are many projects continuing simultaneously, the team members for each project understand the sequence and the manner in which each milestone in the project has to be done. With timeline diagrams, it is really easy to illustrate the important steps or parts of the project along with their importance or significance and required duration to complete them. This presentation is also used for another purpose of presenting the manner of the steps or parts of a project in which they need to be done. This is a typical manner in which the first step needs to be completed before the second step can start.
Here is download link for this Timeline Diagram Template,
