Teamhood Timeline – Forget the Struggle of Project Planning

Teamhood is full of valuable features and we are constantly working on adding even more. To make sure you know all of them and just how to take advantage of each, we have started this series of in depth posts about each major feature of Teamhood. Here are the previous posts about setting up the task board and time tracking, and this time we are covering the Timeline.

Project timeline is an important tool that helps managers understand what is happening across teams and departments at all times as well as to effectively plan out tasks to reach the set goals. Having this in mind we designed the Timeline you will find in Teamhood – it visualizes tasks as well as gives you insights into how best manage your projects.

Visualize tasks in Timeline

When designing this feature, we knew the first and the most important thing you will want to do is see your tasks visualized in relation to their start and due dates. So there is no surprise this is exactly what Timeline is – tasks from all your boards visualized in a calendar like view based on their start and due dates. The blue cursor helps you navigate to the current day and to help separate tasks, rows divide Timeline by board and board rows. Letting you navigate easily.

To make sure your tasks are visualized here, simply add start and end dates in the task details or create new items right from the Timeline view. You can do this by pressing ‘+item’ and the new task will appear on your chosen date. This simple addition to the Kanban board view allows you to see all the work items in terms of their dates and to have more control in your project planning, but this is not all Timeline can do, just the bare minimum.

Plan subtasks

By seeing this plain first view, you may think Teamhood Timeline lacks visualization. However, this could not be further from the truth. Actually, we chose to add in visualizations step by step in this post to make sure you catch everything that can be done.

If you work with large work items, one of the first things you will want to see in Timeline are subtasks. And there is no need to worry, they are here. Just like with parent tasks, you will need to add start and end dates to each subtask to visualize it in Timeline, as they will not automatically assume the dates of the parent task. This way you can choose whether you want to see subtasks in Timeline or not. Subtasks are visualized in a box under their parent task, to make sure they are not confused with other tasks.

Assign to manage workload

Once you have the subtasks sorted, you will probably want to assign work items to the team members. Once those assignments are done, they will also be visualized in Timeline. This lets you know how busy your team members are and plan their next assignments based on availability. Thus, no one is overloaded with tasks and drowning in work.

If team members have tasks across several boards you can make resource planning easier by switching Timeline view into one divided by team members. This way, instead of division by boards and rows, Timeline is horizontally divided by team members. Letting you quickly see how much work each team member has across all boards on any given day.

Set dependencies

To assist those of you working with more complicated processes or in need to set certain sequence to how tasks have to be completed, we made sure to include dependencies. In Timeline you can draw dependencies between tasks and subtasks in one or multiple boards to create just the sequence that works. This allows you to check if the process can be finished on time and make adjustments when needed.

To add dependencies hover over task in Timeline and press one of the two blue dots on the sides to draw an arrow connecting it to another task. if you made a mistake, press on the arrow and delete it with an ‘x’ that appears. You will see the dependencies in Timeline and in task details. It is important to note, you can also set dependencies from the task details – click ‘add dependency’ at the very top of the task detail window and choose which task to block or wait on. This will also be visualized in Timeline.

Looking for more? Check out this list of the best project timeline tools.

Plan according to set dates

If you work in iterations or phases and set start and end dates for your Kanban board rows, this is also visualized in Timeline. After the dates are set for each row, the view will be white only within the time window selected and greyed out for the rest of the view. While you can still extend tasks into the grey zone, you will not be able to add in new tasks, indicating that a certain phase of the project should end there.

This should help plan out your project respecting the deadlines and not overextend tasks.

Filter to see just what you need

Lastly, Teamhood Timeline can be filtered in various ways to see just the information that is important to you. Choose to see only the items assigned to you, only items that are due, or only those with a specific tag or assignee. So You can choose to see only tasks from a specific client or a specific team member to see if the set deadlines are going to be met. Or view due items to make sure you solve the delayed work items quickly so that they do not affect your overall progress.

Find out more about Teamhood features, visit actionable Agile metrics reports to see which tasks you should work on next, or check out the most common thieves of time in the office.

See how Teamhood stacks up against other popular timeline management tools.