11 Free Project Timeline Templates (2024)

If you’re looking for ready-made templates to visualize your project timeline, you’re in the right place. 

We’ve prepared 11 project timeline templates for project managers that can be easily customized and shared with team members and stakeholders.

On this list, you’ll find various template formats, including templates for:

• Word, 
• Excel, 
• PowerPoint, 
• Google Sheets, 
• Google Docs, and 
• Google Slides.

You can use these project timeline templates for industry-specific project management or any other purpose.

Let’s dig in!

Template #1: Basic project timeline

The basic project timeline displays tasks and milestones horizontally. The advantage of this timeline type is that it’s suitable for presenting task dependencies — it allows you to know exactly what task you need to complete before moving on to the next one. 

Besides using it for projects, you can adapt this basic horizontal timeline template for a range of other purposes, such as displaying historical data. Whether you need to visualize a company or product history or a school history project — you can adapt this template to add exact dates or years instead of months.

This project timeline template is designed as a ppt version for PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Download: Google Slides | PowerPoint

Template #2: Simple project timeline

This simple project timeline template in Google Sheets can help you keep track of all your tasks, assignees, and milestones. It also allows you to easily monitor your progress via the “status” column, where you can mark each task with a status. 

The duration of each task will automatically be calculated based on start and end dates. In the Google Sheets version, you’ll also find a Gantt chart that visually shows the duration and progress of your tasks over time.

Download: Google Sheets | Excel | Google Docs | PDF

Template #3: Agile project timeline

The Agile project timeline template is excellent for visually organizing your projects. Task and milestone marks within this template are meant to be dragged around the timeline as needed. 

This template should give you a clear insight into: 

• The duration of individual tasks within the project. 
• Whether certain tasks are overlapping, and 
• What the important milestones are. 

There’s also a dedicated space for task specifics just below the timeline. 

What’s more, you can use this template as a starting point and tailor it to your needs by manually inserting any additional information you require.

Download: Google Sheets | Excel

Template #4: Advanced project timeline 

The advanced project timeline template features a 12-month project timeline and allows you to visually track progress through weeks and quarters. 

The template enables you to easily add colored bars with the title of each task and drag them around the timeline, placing them anywhere you want.

The advantage of this template is that tasks are grouped by color depending on the project phase they are a part of. There are 5 basic project phases within this template — however, you can always add more or change the existing ones. 

You have complete freedom to adjust the template in any way you need, making it a good fit for all types of projects in any industry.

This project timeline template will give you a bird’s-eye perspective of your project, allowing you to better understand the progress and adjust your plan accordingly.

Download: Google Sheets | Excel 

Template #5: 2-in-1 Project timeline

This 2-in-1 template features 2 basic project templates — a yearly project timeline and a quarterly project timeline — and you can use it in Google Docs and Word.

Within this template, you can 

• Create a timeline with projects or tasks, 
• Add names, and 
• Mark important milestones. 

To create a timeline, simply color the table field to your liking — our advice is to keep the timeline in black and white if you plan to print it later.

Download: Google Docs | Word

Template #6: Multiple-project timeline

This project timeline template gives you a quick overview of all your projects within a year, sorted by color. 

The greatest advantage of the multiple-project template is that you’ll gain a transparent insight into your annual plans and be able to manage possible overlaps of your planned projects.

Additionally, you’ll have a rough idea of the start and finish times of each project. This type of project timeline is especially suitable for those who often find themselves managing multiple projects.

Another benefit of this template is that you have endless coloring options — you can choose to assign colors according to different criteria, such as: 

• Project type,
• Stage, 
• Priority,
• Department or sector responsible, or 
• Person responsible.

Download: Google Sheets | Excel

Template #7: Project milestone timeline

The project milestone template helps you visually track project milestones. Firstly, you can arrange your tasks around the timeline. Each horizontal line is meant to represent a task and every task has its own color. The vertical dashed lines represent your project milestones. You can move the milestones around the timeline as required.

Download: Google Sheets | Excel

Template #8: Monthly Gantt chart

The monthly Gantt chart template is great for tracking all tasks within a single month. You can customize the template by moving arrows that represent tasks as they progress, as well as using stars to mark deadlines and milestones. 

This template is useful for more complex 1-month projects as you’ll easily keep track of dependencies. It’s also editable and may come in handy if you need to make a presentation for team members or project stakeholders.

Download: Google Slides | PowerPoint (ppt)

Template #9: 3-Month project timeline

This 3-month project timeline template is intended for tracking quarterly progress visually. Using this timeline template helps you get a clear overview of where you are with each task and project. 

You can expand the colored bar displaying a task as you move closer toward completion. There’s also a column where you can add the percentage of completion for each task and project. Each color can represent different task owners. 

Download: Google Sheets | Excel

Template #10: 6-Month project timeline

The 6-month project timeline template is intended for tracking half-year-long projects. Thanks to the colored bars — each representing a specific task or project — team members and stakeholders can gain insight into progress over 6 months. 

You can expand the colored bars as you move closer toward project or task completion while dedicating each color to specific task owners. 

Download: Google Sheets | Excel

Template #11: 1-Year project timeline

The 1-year project timeline is intended for visualizing the year’s plans. It’s great if you run multiple large projects throughout the year.

This template allows you to see the bigger picture of your entire business plan and share it with stakeholders. It’s available in Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Download: Google Slides | PowerPoint

What is a project timeline template?

A project timeline template is a premade document that serves as a starting point for making your own project timeline. It outlines all the basic information any project timeline should include, such as: 

• Tasks or projects,
• Deadlines,
• Task or project duration,
• Dependencies, and
• Milestones.

The project timeline template is often created to be used offline in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, or online in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Why use a project timeline template?

You should use a project timeline template to save time when starting your project, as it’s quicker than creating your own template from scratch. Also, with a template, you’ll be sure you’ve included all important information in your project timeline. 

So, if you’re stuck and don’t know where to start, a project timeline will help you get an idea of how a project template should look. 

Finally, project timeline templates are useful as they help keep team members and stakeholders on the same page and provide a bird’s-eye perspective on ongoing tasks. 

How to use Plaky for tracking projects?

Plaky is free project and task management software that simplifies work by promoting visual planning. This means you’ll have all ongoing tasks grouped by categories of your choice — for instance, by quarters or departments. 

In Plaky, you can label each task as “to do”, “in progress”, or “done”. You’ll be able to assign task owners and notify them of any task changes. In addition, you’ll have all due dates, files, and other important data available in one place on a shared cloud. 

With Plaky’s activity log, you’ll stay informed about all project actions in real time. 

If you don’t want to build your workflow from scratch, Plaky offers a variety of project management templates for various workflows to help you start.

Another advantage of Plaky is the Summary Row feature that serves as an aggregate of data from other rows. Basically, you’ll see key metrics and summarized information in a more digestible format.

Apart from that, Plaky offers the Timeline field to its paid users. This feature serves as a visual representation of temporal aspects of a project. You can track durations as well as all start and end dates related to your project activities.

Plaky Summary Row and Timeline field

So, with Plaky, you won’t have to rummage through bottomless piles of data or get lost while trying to figure out who’s doing what and by when. 

Instead, both you and your teammates can access all this information anytime, online via desktop or mobile app.

With all this data at your disposal in Plaky, you’ll be able to create your project timeline in no time. 

If you’re a Plaky PRO plan user, you can also try Plaky’s built-in Gantt chart for visualizing your project timeline. Also, you can get the Plaky Enterprise plan as part of the Plaky Bundle plan. 

And, if you’re not looking to invest in a project management tool right now, Plaky offers a Free Forever plan for basic task organization for an unlimited number of users.

To start tracking your projects more transparently, sign up for Plaky’s free account today and give it a try.