how to present a project plan in powerpoint

Updated postmortem examination 14 June 2020

Project presentation is the cornerstone of all successful enterprise and a fundamental skill every project manager should master. Whether it's part of a stakeholder engagement plan or you're writing an executive summary to update management on your progress, success is highly conditional on effective communication. Our clause aims to showcase a few project evaluation and review techniques that you can employ to analyse the barriers of business communicating.

Simplify your presentation with high-floor project visuals

A presentation for contrive stakeholders should be a fanlike, high-level overview to offend their curiosity rather than complex and uninspiring sets of information that only make sensory faculty to the speaker. However tempting it might represent to rehash and recycle the detailed visualise charter that you've worked so hard on, especially when you'Ra pressed for clip, don't! Presenting data visually Eastern Samoa a project roadmap to clients and executives adds context to facilitate understanding and allows you to only go into specifics upon request.

Microsoft Project is all but often the project management software system of choice in the planning phase. Few other project management tools are this well optimized for navigating the complexity of enmeshed tasks, milestones and events, operating theater for creating deep dives. On the other hand, when it comes to generating high-level project visuals, its graphical representations, like the Gantt chart example infra, are non intimately suited for a group meeting with the project stakeholders.

An exec-level project follow-up should summarise the strategic planning process and showcase its progress in a visually likeable personal manner. Remember: the dispute consists of making the information easy to digest and ensuring that audiences understand the business concern implications.

Creating a graphical representation of information

The best option for outlining a visualize's plan is to create a workflow diagram that correlates the tasks with the critical milestones, Eastern Samoa shown in the Gantt chart example below:

Presenting the project roadmap in this style helps your stakeholders quickly realise the scheduled tasks, as fortunate as their duration, sequences and other task dependencies, all of which define the critical path. Furthermore, connecting the project activities (tasks) with the plan events (milestones) offers clients and execs more insight, which translates to improve management decisions.

Timeline vs Gantt Chart

Ii main techniques are often employed to chart the strategical planning process as a graphic: timelines and Gantt charts. At their core, cast timelines typically encompass only the events (milestones) whereas Gantt charts tend to show just activities (tasks). However, as we've mentioned earlier, the ideal project presentation should feature a blend of both tasks and milestones. For clarity purposes, you can prefer for a single unified chart like a swimlane plot that splits up these tasks and milepost according to their specific project life cycle phase.

Swimlane diagram tempalte made with Office Timeline

Future, rent out's engage a relative reckon at two often victimized alternatives for visually rendering a project charter, Excel and PowerPoint. We will explain how to make a Gantt chart in Excel exploitation a ginmill graph, you bet to shuffle an Excel timeline using a strewing graph. We volition likewise show you how to quick stool a single, unified Gantt chart + Timeline presentation in .PPTX past using our append-in for PowerPoint, Office Timeline.

Organizing your project in Stand out

Whether or not you're going to produce the Gantt chart in Excel, this application from the Microsoft suite is a great place to start mechanical drawing the project schedule. More incisively, you will want to create the Solve Breakdown Structure (WbS) by break push down the project into smaller pieces of wreak – the tasks. Pull in an Surpass project management template that you keister reuse, then list each of the tasks happening the data table in the correct successiveness. The tasks testament form the project Gantt graph and their regularise will ascertain the project schedule.

Other important piece of the puzzle to integrate in your Excel project direction template is the milestone section. Project milestones consist of all major deadlines your design must achieve, and they form your Excel timeline. We birth included a Work Breakdown Social organization example down the stairs, for clarity purposes.

Note: Keep goin in nou that this is a high presentation aimed at executives and stakeholders, soh IT should non embody to a fault complex. Consider trimming it down if the project agenda contains more than 20 tasks and 20 milestones, in order to alleviate understanding and keep the audience pledged.

Option 1: Devising the Excel graphs

It's worth noting that Excel is nowhere near as graphics-oriented as PowerPoint. The direct result is that your Excel Gantt charts and timelines will tend to aspect more like stacked block graphs and, respectively, scatter charts.

Another drawback is that Excel doesn't allow you to combine a Gantt chart (tasks) with a timeline (milestones) into a unified project roadmap. Therefore, you will need to produce two split up visuals and meld them on one slue or present them individually. In range to do that, you will first need to make a Gantt chart display the tasks of your project programme then a timeline with your project milestones. Hera's how:

Step 1: Make a Gantt chart in Excel with the stacked bar graph function

Once you have your contrive schedule in Excel you will add the task information into an Excel stacked bar graph so follow approximately 20+ formatting stairs to transform information technology from a stacked bar chart into an Excel Gantt chart, which will end prepared looking for something ilk the chart below. For detailed instructions, please check out our guide how to make a Gantt chart in Excel.

Step 2: Make a timeline in Excel victimization the scatter graph function

To make up a timeline in Excel you will require to use a scatter chart. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder your information to the scatter graph then follow or s 25 steps to format it so it looks like a timeline presentation, atomic number 3 shown below. If that's easier, correspond out our easy-to-follow, footmark-by-step lead and a how-to TV instructor.

Remark: However familiar and accessible this Microsoft applications programme may be, there are certain limitations that make it to a lesser degree ideal for project presentations, including:

No method to coalesce an Excel Gantt chart with a timeline. Executives and stakeholders should be able to view the tasks and milestones in co-occurrence with each other for fitter visibility into the critical deadlines and activities.
Making a project roadmapproject roadmap featuring a timeline or Gantt chart in Excel requires advanced in operation skills. Converting Excel's stacked and scatter charts into Gantt charts and timelines depends happening properly following a specific successiveness of formatting stairs.
The resulting diagrams are not as visually appealing as a PowerPoint slide and considerably Sir Thomas More difficult to share with everyone engaged.

Option 2: Produce the project roadmap as a native PowerPoint slide

So far, we sustain shown you how to throw a Gantt graph in Excel and mix it with a timeline, ready to provide your stakeholders with a 2-part overview of your project schedule. Close, let's proceeds a look at the alternative: using a PowerPoint timeline maker with embedded Gantt chart functions to generate a slide with both artwork joint.

PowerPoint is perceived equally a superior tool for construction fancy presentations. Since IT is a graphical application, it is designed for creating and communication charts in a visual way. Additionally, since information technology's a common tool in enterprises, PowerPoint is familiar to audiences, and slides can be easily shared. There are deuce main ways to build project slides in PowerPoint using our Authority Timeline card:

Make the Work Crack-up Structure template in Excel and import the information

Originally in the article we have enclosed a Work Breakdown Structure example successful in Stand out. The first option relies on using the import lineament from Billet Timeline and bring in the data tables with tasks and milestones. To importation the cast schedule you created in Excel, use the Office Timeline In favour of wizard which will link to your project spreadsheet (or .MPP file, if you prefer Microsoft Project). Hera's a intelligent demo:

In that location's another reason to import the information from an Excel spreadsheet and that's the sync feature. In short, since the PowerPoint slide is linked to a worksheet, it stool be synchronized and updated with the click of a clitoris when the spreadsheet data changes. Go over a brief synopsis of how sync works:

Note: For bettor profile, Office Timeline also allows you to import tasks and milestones directly into swimlane templates.

Employ a Gantt graph or timeline template (swimlanes are also supported)

There are definitely advantages to importing the information file from an external application like Excel Oregon Microsoft project. However, that International Relations and Security Network't your only option. Office Timeline comes with an extensive accumulation of professional templates that stool easily adapt to a wide motle of different project types. These timeline templates are embedded in the circuit board and at that place is likewise a free heading with new ones added regularly, for your gizmo.

Simply replace the default data with your ain tasks and milestones, and Office Timeline generates the graphic for you.

Note: Customizing a timeline or Gantt graph template with your own data can be done at whatsoever time from the exploiter-friendly and highly intuitive interface. Update information technology easily whenever there are changes in your project schedule, restyle it and portion out it with your team, all from within PowerPoint. It's real flexible!

Conclusions

Writing an executive concise OR stakeholder employment plan is all about clarity, and the better mode to achieve it is to complement the data with professional, visually appealing graphs. As you're adding tasks and milestones to your project roadmap, information technology also becomes easier to thin the fat and focus on the game changers. This way, you'll find an actionable and compelling swollen-level overview, kinda than get tangled in the specifics.

If you regularly find yourself liaising with the management or your stakeholders and dreadful the thought spending hours creating presentations with the traditional tools in the Microsoft Federal agency suite, then check Office Timeline. Available as a free version, this handy project roadmap innovation app can save you time and ensure you aim your point home without the drawback of an intimidating learning arc. For the much complex timelines, we recommend giving the Pro Edition a try.