Project Pipeline Templates, Trackers and Examples

By Kate Eby | June 27, 2021

We’ve compiled the most effective project pipeline templates, trackers, and examples for project managers, project sponsors, steering committees, and team members. Plus, get tips on creating project pipelines for unique projects. 

Included on this page, you’ll find six essential project pipeline templates for managing effective projects, including a project pipeline tracker template, a project management pipeline template, a sample project pipeline report template, and a sample project pipeline tracker template.

Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Download Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Use this simple project pipeline tracker template to standardize your company’s project pipeline management process. Plan, track, and evaluate your project’s effectiveness by entering details for each of the six stages of the projects in your pipeline: research, approval, develop, test, execute and launch. Enter project ID, project name, and start and end dates, and the template will automatically calculate projected stage, completion date, and duration. This project pipeline tracker template also includes visually rich, auto-calculating Active Pipeline and Monthly Report tabs, both of which give you real-time, at-a-glance insight into your projects’ statuses. 

To learn more about project management templates, read “Top Project Management Excel Templates.”

Sample Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Sample Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Download Sample Project Pipeline Tracker Template

Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets 

This easy-to-use sample project pipeline tracker template enables you to ensure timely project delivery. Enter details for the research, approval, development, testing, execution, and launch stages, and keep tabs on progress in terms of planning, managing, and executing tasks. Ultimately, this template will provide you with the details of each project in your pipeline to help you deliver exceptional projects on time — and to the satisfaction of all stakeholders and team members.

Project Management Pipeline Template

Project Management Pipeline PowerPoint

Download Project Management Pipeline Template — Microsoft PowerPoint

Use this comprehensive project management pipeline PowerPoint template to manage multiple projects in your pipeline. Unique, graphically rich slides include details for project delivery timelines, days per project, resource allocation, project financials, risk analysis and risk total, open and pending actions, and a project report. This dashboard-style template in a presentation-ready format helps ensure that projects are planned, managed, and executed successfully; share the deck with team members, project sponsors, and stakeholders to get signoff. 

Learn how to get the most out of your project planning by reading “Project Planning 101: A Step-by-Step Guide.”

Project Pipeline Report Template

Project Pipeline Report Template

Download Project Pipeline Report Template

Microsoft PowerPoint | Smartsheet

Use this project pipeline report template as your single-source, high-level presentation tool for all projects in your pipeline. This two-slide template includes project-by-project details for tasks, task owners, statuses, and due dates. It also provides project schedules in a Gantt chart that includes the six stages of project development — from research to launch — to ensure that the details of all projects in your queue are accounted for, assigned, and on track for project execution. 

To find more on project management dashboards, read “How to Set Up a Project Management Dashboard in Smartsheet.”

Sample Project Pipeline Report Template

Sample Project Pipeline Report Template

Download Sample Project Pipeline Report Template - Microsoft PowerPoint 

This sample project pipeline report template includes pre-filled example text and provides at-a-glance visibility into the status of projects in your pipeline. Project-by-project tiles enable you to quickly view the project’s current stage (research, approval, develop, test, execute, launch) and its vulnerability to risks or roadblocks. Use this template to quickly gain visibility into every project’s all-around health and status with its holistic, visually rich offerings.

Project Tracker Template

Project Tracker Template

Download Project Tracker Template

Microsoft Excel | Smartsheet

This project tracker template provides you with a high-level perspective on the progress of the projects in your pipeline. Enter status, priority, deadline details, and the risk level for a project’s success. A deliverables section enables you to enter deliverable-by-deliverable details and the percentage complete of each item. A cost/hours section provides you with the fixed cost, as well as estimated and actual hours, so that each project’s task budget details are readily available to all stakeholders. 

To learn more about project portfolio management, read “Project Portfolio Management 101: Processes, Tools, and Examples.”

What Is a Project Pipeline?

A project pipeline is a series of projects that need to be planned, launched, tracked, and evaluated upon completion. By having an effective method to standardize your project pipeline process, you ensure that projects have agreed-upon timelines, team members assigned to each individual task, clear statuses, and accurately tracked project details. Managing the project pipeline is key to the success of your individual projects.

What Is Project Pipeline Management?

Project pipeline management refers to the overall effort of tracking a series of projects — from ideation to launch — using a standardized, repeatable method. Without a set method to manage all of your organization’s projects in the queue, deadlines might remain unclear, tasks unassigned, and projects themselves at risk. 

Keeping tabs on the components and stages of multiple projects requires that you have a reliable way to manage both the big picture and the fine details of each project, and to be able to share this project pipeline management information with project team members and stakeholders.

How Do You Create a Project Pipeline?

To create an effective project pipeline, you need a comprehensive project-management method that accounts for every project’s individual requirements. A template solution can help you effectively manage every project in your pipeline, instead of one-off project management that requires extended effort. 

When you create a way to successfully track and manage the projects in your pipeline, you ensure that priorities are clear, tasks are assigned, and all sponsors, team members, and stakeholders are confident that projects in the pipeline are on track for success. 

By contrast, having one-off versions in project management results in team members spending the majority of their time and energy chasing details — often in a way that only meets the needs of a specific project. This unstandardized method ends up burning money and other resources to accommodate an individual project’s needs, instead of applying a scalable solution to all projects in the pipeline.

How to Manage a Project Pipeline

Successful project pipeline management provides instant insight into multiple projects’ timelines, progress, and statuses. A well-managed project pipeline clearly shows which projects and individual project-specific tasks are on track, if there are any roadblocks, and whether a project is at potential risk.

A customizable project pipeline template enables you to modify your project pipeline process to fit your organization’s project management needs. Furthermore, a template also provides editable default text to guide you through the project pipeline management process, from project planning to post-project evaluation. 

Though project pipeline templates may vary, they often include the following universal sections for tracking multiple projects: 

  • Project ID: Enter a unique ID number for the individual project. 
  • Project Name: Enter a name that accurately represents the individual project for all stakeholders.  
  • Start Date: Enter the start date for the individual project.  
  • Type: Enter the individual project’s type (e.g., new, internal, external, etc.).  
  • Owner: Enter the name of the project manager or other team member responsible for the individual project. 
  • Completion Date: Enter the target date for the individual project’s completion.  
  • Duration: Enter the length of time the project will take, from ideation to launch.  

Additionally, project pipeline templates often include the following stages to define an individual project’s status: 

  • Research: The project is currently being planned, requirements gathered, and resources allotted. 
  • Approval: The project is currently being reviewed by project sponsors before it can commence. 
  • Develop: The project is currently in progress and targeted to be finished by the established completion date. 
  • Test: The project is currently being tested to ensure that all tasks have been completed, and the project is on track for successful execution. 
  • Execute: The project is prepared for launch, and all planned deliverables are presented to key stakeholders. 
  • Launch: The project is completed and ready to release to the client. 

By filling out these project-pipelines sections at the start, you and your team members are assured that as your projects progress in the pipeline, you have a clear, unified method for tracking all details and stages of your projects’ inevitable success.

How to Present Your Project Pipeline

The most effective way to share high-level details of the projects in your pipeline is to use a visually rich, presentation-friendly format. By creating an easy-to-understand graphical story, you can illustrate how pipeline projects are being managed, tracked, and executed. 

High-level visuals — such as pie charts, bar graphs or sequential diagrams — provide easy insight into how your projects are progressing. Such figurative representations should also enable you and your team, including project sponsors and other stakeholders, to drill down into individual projects’ details and data, including tasks, statuses, and deadlines. Pie charts, bar graphs, and sequential diagrams also enable you to represent each project’s delivery time, duration, resource allocation, risk analysis, and individual tasks. 

Regardless of the nature of the projects in your pipeline, project pipeline illustrations — along with explanatory text — can provide key stakeholders with quick insight into what a given project will entail and helps ensure successful completion of all projects in your pipeline.

Streamline Project Pipeline Management with Smartsheet

From simple task management and project planning to complex resource and portfolio management, Smartsheet helps you improve collaboration and increase work velocity -- empowering you to get more done. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

 

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