Project Management Templates
Setting up a project management system using one of the popular software packages for project management helps you keep track of tasks, schedules, people, and budgets. It also generates reports, charts, tables, and other visual aids useful in meetings and presentations. But creating such detailed systems from scratch is time-consuming and error-prone. Fortunately, there are numerous project management templates available to spare you much of that trouble.
A project management template is an extensive collection of document files, each preformatted with text, graphics, and links to other documents. All you have to do is answer a few questions to customize the templates to your specific project. Project management templates take care of the form of your project management system so you can focus on its substance.
Such software project management templates come in a wide variety of formats for many popular general-purpose and specialized software packages. On the Web, you can find Microsoft Project management plan templates, free project management templates for Excel, Microsoft Word project management templates, and templates for various proprietary project management software packages. When evaluating project management templates, however, you should make sure they conform to professional standards.
Some project management templates are amateurish affairs cobbled together by office administrators and tossed online free of charge. Others are rigorously designed to comply with best practices established in the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK) maintained by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the worldwide standard-setting and professional certification body for project management professionals. Another standard to which a professional project management template should conform is PRINCE2.
Free project management template sets generally focus on one aspect of project management, e.g., budgeting and estimating, logistics management and scheduling, etc. Comprehensive project management templates are massive things that require many hours of graphic design and programming time; they generally cost money. On the other hand, when you pay for project management templates you will usually get technical support to help you customize the templates for your needs, plus updates of the templates for some period of time, usually a year after purchase.
Project management templates save you time, provide a framework within which you can develop a project, help ensure that you do not omit any of the vital ingredients of a comprehensive project management plan, and produce useful reports that make project management easier and reporting progress to stakeholders simpler.