Project Management: a project plan with Excel (template)

In the previous lesson I explained some general rules about how to organize a project plan structure and implement it with an excel worksheet to manage your projects. I implemented the Excel worksheet that contains two sheets: WBS and HR. WBS is the work breakdown structure of our project and HR contains data about the resources assigned to each task.

Download Project Plan Template (excel)


WBS Sheet: Activity-Task status
Columns A:F contains general information about Activities and Tasks:

Before assigning a resource to a task, you have to add all information about the task's owner into the sheet HR.

HR: Define Project Resources
In this sheet you can add resources and assign them to your project's tasks:


Task Assigned counts the number of task assigned to each resources. It is calculated using COUNTIF() Excel function. This is an example of use of this function:

=COUNTIF(WBS.D:D;B5)

... in other words: "update the counter only if, in the interval of reference, WBS.D:D (column D of the WBS worksheet), find a value qual to the cell's value B5 in the sheet HR".


WBS Sheet: Project Dates
Columns G:I contain informations about activity start-date/finish-date/total days. For each task, you have only add a value for Start Date and Finish Date. Days will be calculated automatically such as difference between columns H - columns G.


WBS Sheet: Re-planned Date
Columns K:Q, contains info about re-planned dates and the project delay.
If you want to re-plan start-date or finish-date of an activity, you have check the column K with an "X" into the cell relative to the task you want to re-plan.


So, you set SD Delay (start day delay - in terms of days) and/or FD Delay (finish day delay - in terms of days) - Column L:M. Re-Start Date, Re Finish Date, Re-Days (replanned days) and Project Delay will be calculated from the sheet.

WBS Sheet: Costs Control
Columns S:X contains informations about cost management. You can specify hours and hour cost for each resource assiged to a task.

You can also add Fixed Cost and an Adjust (flat) to simulate cost's trend.

Download Project Plan Template (excel)

More updates about this topic coming soon :)