Timeline template
Ayoa’s Timeline template helps you to plan processes and projects more effectively by breaking them down into key actions, then structuring them into a clear chronological order that everyone can make sense of.
What is a timeline?
A timeline is a simple visual tool that can be used to help you to manage workflows and plan projects and processes more effectively by breaking them down into chronological actions. By plotting your project or process in this way, you can clearly see the order in which tasks should be completed and get a quick overview of your current progress at any stage.
Although this tool is typically used by design and development teams, those in any department can use our Timeline template to plan and manage comprehensive projects, including sales, marketing, public relations, and customer support teams. A timeline has many uses; the most common ones being to tell stories (such as an overview of events) and for project managers to use with their team to keep them on track. However, a timeline can also act as a way for you to provide updates to key stakeholders and for creative agencies to communicate with their clients.
Why should you use a timeline?
There are many benefits to using a timeline to tell a story, plan a process, or map out a process or workflow. Thanks to their highly visual nature, timelines make it easy to keep track of every stage of the process and see at what stage each step should occur. By sharing this with your team when working on a project, everyone involved can see at a glance what tasks have been done, what’s still outstanding, and what their responsibilities are. Thanks to your progress being clear at every stage, you can keep everyone involved in the project feeling motivated and productive.
When planning a project, our Timeline template will also enable you to establish the scope of your project. By defining the specific actions needed to bring your project to completion, you can gain clarity on the resources you need (such as time, money and manpower) and set a realistic timeframe for it to be completed.
How to use our Timeline template
Our Timeline template is already set out into the sections you need and includes examples to help you get started. Discover how to use our template to plan and manage your projects more effectively below.
To access the template, sign up to Ayoa. Once you've signed up, navigate to the homepage to create a new whiteboard, mind map or task board and choose this template from the library.
Start by defining the different stages of your project, process or story from start to completion, then use the text tool to add these to the top of the template. Don’t forget, you can easily add and delete boxes from your timeline if you need to!
On the left-hand side of the template, you will see that we’ve included sections for you to indicate the progress or status of specific tasks within a project. Add any tasks relating to your project to the template using sticky notes, then organize them into the ‘In progress’ or ‘Unassigned’ categories under whichever stage they fall into. Use the ‘Deliverables’ and ‘References’ sections of the template to add any documents or notes that will help you at each stage.
Tip: Use Ayoa to turn these into tasks, assign them to members of your team, and add start dates, due dates, reminders and more.
When you’re ready to move a task from one stage to the next, just drag and drop it! When a task has been completed, move it to the ‘Completed’ box under whichever stage it falls into and give yourself a pat on the back!
