Visualizing a project timeline allows the teams to overlook the project by giving them a complete and comprehensive perspective on past, present, and future events. A timeline is easy to follow and understand. It’s the perfect visualization tool for teams, showing an overview, letting them know what’s been achieved, and mapping out the path ahead.
Characteristics of Timeline Visualization
The main characteristics of timeline visualization are time-centric visualization, clear representation of task dependencies, milestones, and deadlines, and facilitated progress tracking and historical records of events.
- Time-centric visualization relies on showing the events and tasks as they take place on a timeline.
- Task dependencies show the team which task must be completed for the next one to start. Connecting dependent tasks helps the team to oversee the project’s process, spotting potential obstacles and bottlenecks ahead of time. Teams can create dynamic adjustments and move the tasks further down the timeline if they need more time to complete them.
- Timeline visualizations are used to create milestone highlights, letting the team know which important events happened or are planned for the future. Most importantly, a timeline allows progress tracking, which is vital for overlooking the process and motivating the team.
- Creating a timeline visualization will help the team meet the deadlines by clearly showing them when a task should be completed. Deadline alerts are also useful to notify the team of approaching deadlines.
- Creating a timeline visualization is a shared responsibility. It’s not just the responsibility of a team lead or project manager. It allows the entire team to participate and add collaborative input to help them better plan their project’s process.
- Timeline visualization allows facilitated progress tracking and lets the team in on the progress made. If you want to turn a timeline visualization into a source of information, add resource linkages and help the team understand and find all the components that contributed to the project’s progress.
- It’s also very useful as a source, keeping a historical record of events or tasks completed over a specific time period. This can serve as an excellent reference for planning future work and creating future predictions.
Key Components of a Project Timeline
Tasks and events, milestones, dependencies, start and due dates, progress indicators, labels, or color codes are key components of a project timeline. You choose to place events on the timeline and enhance their visibility.
- Tasks and events can be represented on a timeline axis that shows days, weeks, months, sprints, or years. A vertical axis can be used to place tasks and events, whereas the horizontal axis represents time flow.
- The team's or company's milestones and achievements can be placed horizontally to show what’s been achieved. A milestone can be a deliverable or an important event for the entire team.
- A project timeline shows the dependencies connecting dependent tasks. It also tells the team the order in which tasks must be completed so they can only proceed with other tasks once the preceding task is completed. Once you have task dependencies and assignees, it will be easier for the team to share important information or check who’s assigned to which task.
- Start and due dates are added to each event or task, letting the team plan work and synch schedules. Adding the responsible person to each task allows the team to overview their own task assignments or easily contact other team members for input and collaboration.
- A project timeline should have start and end dates for each task or event, as it lets the team plan out their work and sync schedules. Use the timeline visualization to let the team know who is responsible for which task and add each person to their own task assignments.
- Another essential aspect you’d want to include is a progress indicator that lets the team know how a task or project is progressing. Giving each activity a timeframe and placing that timeframe on a timeline will let the team know precisely how long an activity is expected to take.
- Labels can be added to the tasks to allow the team to distinguish and easily find a certain type of task. Labels can also indicate the level of completion of a certain task and show it as in progress or prepared for testing.
- Teams can use color codes to distinguish between types of tasks, teams, or assignees. Including a legend in the timeline is essential so the team can quickly scan it to understand the meaning behind the colors or badges used. The timeline helps promote transparency and scalability. It lets you scale your work and processes so the team can maximize the available resources.
Steps to Create an Effective Project Timeline Visualization
When drafting a project timeline, these are the steps the team should take.
- Step one: Get everyone on the team involved. The team will use the visualization, so they should participate in its creation and be inspired and motivated to contribute to it over time.
- Step two: Provide a space for visualizing the project timeline. The board should be available to every team member, whether physically in the office or in the software. They should have access to it and be able to change it on the go. The changes should also be visible to all other team members, letting them know how the project progresses.
- Step three: Include the legends and explanations of the color coding, symbols, and elements that make the timeline visualization, as this will facilitate participation.
- Step four: plan activities to create a transparent timeline, even if they may change along the way. Making work transparent and visible will benefit the team by documenting the work process and adapting to changes.
- Step five: encourage the team to express their ideas for improvement, make changes to the board, and allow them to remain flexible and open to changes. The board visualizes the work process and should reflect the processes that happen as they happen.
Benefits of a Visual Project Timeline
A visual project timeline is a guide that leads the team to complete the project on time successfully.
It helps motivate the team to finish the work placed before them and lets them plan it better. It’s also a way to facilitate collaboration within the team, allowing them to work together towards achieving their goals.
Timeline visualization will help the team manage the most important resource - time.
A project timeline also shows how much time was necessary to finish specific tasks, projects, or aspects of the project, which can be very useful for planning future projects.
A timeline lets you look back and forth in time and allows the teams to comprehend their work process fully.
If you’re looking for a visualization tool to give the team perspective and let them quickly see the bigger picture, a project timeline is the perfect way to do just that!
Tools for Project Timeline Visualization
A timeline is best used when the team has complete access, so it should be created in a virtual space.
A timeline can also be put on a whiteboard, paper, or corkboard. Still, it can be challenging to use such a timeline for teams or team members working remotely or want to contribute when away from the office, as well as the physical representation of the timeline. ActiveCollab allows you to place a timeline in a virtual space, where the entire team will have access to it no matter where they are and can use it from multiple devices, such as tablets, computers, or mobile phones, to add changes, create, edit, or complete tasks.
ActiveCollab allows the team to view a project as a task list, in columns, or as a timeline view. Each member can pick the view of their own preference, which will not affect how other members view the project.
If you view the tasks as a timeline view, you will also view each task's start and due dates and the dependencies between them.
Each task can have an assignee or labels, making it easy to show all the aspects of work. Dependencies can be created or broken in a couple of clicks on the timeline view.
Types of Timeline Visualizations
A timeline helps you visually show your project so you can look at achievements relative to a time span. For this, a team can use Gantt charts, which help you place all activities, tasks, or milestones in a chart representing time.
You can also place milestones on the timeline to create a milestone chart that shows the entire company's or project's progress.
Some teams use timelines as their roadmaps to show the team and the company where they are headed, as well as the achievements in the past. If you want to visualize the company’s path or growth, create a roadmap that shows progress on the product or company.
A timeline can also be resource-based, letting the team and managers overlook the resources spent on the project.
Timeline visualizations can be linear or cyclical, showing the progress of your project or its stages. They can also show the phases of the project. If you choose to create project phase timelines, you will overlook the project’s progress from conception to completion.
Historical timelines let teams view dates, events, or milestones retrospectively and use them as a reference for future planning. They show progress made over a longer time period and place it in perspective with a particular time span.
Forecast timelines are a great way to plan ahead, but you can also create evolutionary timelines that show the project's progress and evolution.
Ultimately, your timeline can have all or some of these components, depending on the team’s needs and preferences. The important thing to remember is to encourage the entire team to visualize the project’s progress using the timeline and contribute to it, making the most of the information represented there.
There is no point in creating a timeline just for the sake of creating it; it should have a purpose and help the team better understand the processes that happen while they work on a project.
