551 Shares Before you can plan for your project you have to have the right tools to collect the data you need in order to formulate a strategy. You know there are a lot of balls to keep in the air, regardless of whether the project is big or small, so think of these tools as safety nets that make sure you don’t lose track of anything essential. Think of all the things you have to process, from scheduling to resources and defining tasks and milestones along the way to a successful project completion.

The days of Post-It notes and notebooks filled with scraps of paper are long gone. Thankfully, we’ve got you covered. Visit our and you’ll find Excel and Word templates for creating all the project documents you need to manage your project.

Are you interested in free project management Excel spreadsheets? Here are eight essential PM templates you can download and use right now, including two new templates we’ve recently added! A Gantt chart is a visual tool that helps you see at-a-glance the scheduling of tasks and their dependencies over the lifecycle of a project. While it’s true a Gantt chart can be overly complex in Excel, especially when you are in need of more advanced scheduling features like task dependencies and resource allocation, they remain a vital part of any project manager’s toolkit. That’s why we recommend using to help plan tasks and projects collaboratively with your team. Online Gantt chart tools integrate into project management & planning software, so it can update in real-time. This allows for easy drag-and-drop changes and can be color coded to customize as you need.

But to quickly make a Gantt chart from your task lists, download this free Excel Gantt chart template for an easy way to create a project schedule. Just add tasks and deadlines to visualize how long your project will take. The need for a status report is obvious. If you don’t have good intel on what is happening in the project, then you are managing blind. You have no idea if you’re on track or if resources are being blocked. With this free Excel status report template, you have a tool to greatly improve your project communications, both with stakeholders when you’re delivering a presentation, but also with team members.

It’s up to you to decide on the frequency of the reports. But with a status report template a lot of the busy work that can pull you away from a project is already done, giving you greater access to the information you need. Tracking the project is crucial to ensure that it remains on schedule.

Below the widespread rules to produce or brush up of project management excel templates free download: 1. Cover all the fundamentals for your project management excel templates free download. Explore other project management excel templates free download for inspiration 3. Use as few words as is feasible 4. Quantify your accomplishments.

That means also keeping tabs on the work at a task-level. This free project and task tracking template can help as a task to-do list, and it includes columns for the planned and actual duration of the project in order to know what’s working and what needs more attention. Once you integrate your project and task tracking template into a project management software system, you can then produce Gantt charts to get a clear visual on the project, as well as get that data delivered to your dashboard to note progress in real-time. Risk is a part of managing a project. The job involves being able to anticipate what risks are likely to occur and then formulating a response to get the project back on track. That’s where this free Excel risk tracking template comes in. First, it allows you to list all the possible risks you believe may happen over the course of the project.