Why Create Project Timeline Chart?

There are 2 key elements in all the successful projects I have been part of.

They had exceptional individuals who are also exceptional team players
The communication and collaboration is really good.
While there is little that project management software can do when it comes to first point, the second
point can be addressed by using right tools and visualizations. In this installment and the part 5 and 6
of this series, we will learn some excel based visualizations / charts that can help you to communicate
about the project status and progress to your team and stake holders.

Project milestones can be shown in a simple time line chart in excel. While the chart doesnt look
complicated, it can provide good amount of information on project progress in a simple and
understandable chart.

We will learn to create a project milestone chart like this:

Steps to create a project milestone chart in excel

1. In order to create a project milestone chart, we need to have the milestone data. The

simplest format for milestone data is Date and the milestone. But since our chart requires the

milestone to be displayed at a certain height on the chart, we will add the third column height.
 PS: the height column can be easily calculated using formulas. I leave it to your imagination.

2. Once you have the data in the above format, we will add 2 more helper columns named

DUMMY and Milestone. The Dummy column is used to create the timeline (where Y axis value is

zero). The milestone column is a more cleaned up version of milestones (see how it is showing #NA

where the milestone is blank.)

3. Now, select the date and dummy columns and insert a line chart.

4. To this chart, we will add one more data series Height column.

5. Now select the height data series and change the chart type to a bar chart. Also set

the height series to be plotted on secondary axis. Learn more about combining 2 chart
 types and adding secondary axis in excel.

6. We will also set the horizontal / axis labels for the height series as the milestones. We

need to do this so that when we set the data labels for the height series, we will see the milestone

instead of month.

7. At this point our chart should look like this:

8. Now, we will add data labels to the height series. Set the label type as category
9. We will also add error bars to the height series (the bar chart). We will configure the error

bar in such a way that they are shown 100% on the negative side only.

10. After doing this, the chart should look like this:

11. Finally we will do some formatting like,

1. Removing fill color / line from height series by setting them to None / transparent.

2. Changing the error bar color to a dull shade of gray.

3. Adding chart title and aligning it.

4. Removing vertical axes and gridlines.

5. Formatting horizontal axis changing label orientation, removing tick marks.

After all this is done, our project milestone time line chart should look like this:

12. That is all, we now have a cool looking project milestone chart ready. Now go and achieve a

milestone.