9 effective project management templates to fast-track your workflows

Whether you're managing a new type of project or aren’t sure how to approach your team’s next tasks, the initial steps of overlooking any assignment can be daunting.

In times like these, project management templates are valuable tools in your organizational arsenal. These pre-built frameworks aren't just guiding lights — they provide a step-by-step layout to launch projects and see them through successfully.

By reflecting on each project's unique nature and potential, you can pinpoint the ideal methodologies and templates for task management to realize your team's goals, streamline operations, and drive the company to conquer milestone after milestone.

From tasks and timelines to deadlines and deliverables, use the following templates to organize your work and get more out of your projects.

This project management template provides a bird’s-eye view of all the essentials — a summary, easy-to-access documentation, and relevant metrics, just to name a few. 

At first glance, it may seem like a barebones layout, but click on any element under the “Documents” panel and the template reveals boards, tables, and gallery views. Each is color-coded to identify the project status, and there are even emojis that you can assign to each task for easy identification.

The first thing you’ll see on this project management template is a “Quick Access” board that you can customize according to your priorities. “Active projects” tells you what you’re currently working on, and anyone on your team can view tasks by the day or the week, thanks to tabular views.

If you have regular customers or a retainer model with specific clients, you can assign them to the “Recurring tasks” list, while “Upcoming events” informs you of any new or important affairs, like meetings or team briefs.

Not all projects come from large companies and budding agencies. For those in the freelance or individual contractor business, this template can help you organize all the tasks you may be juggling alone.

It has a freelance workflow's vital cogs — a project overview with a progress bar, a task checklist, and templates for clientele, budgeting, and project timelines. If you like to keep everything in one document, this template is the place.

The software project management blueprint caters to those working with software, Agile, and Scrum teams. The calendar gives you a surface-level perspective, but when you open the roadmap section, things get specific. Here, you can name your projects, assign them Gantt chart templates, and track progress with the color-coded bars.

The roadmap section mimics the calendar, but you can easily scroll through projects and view them at a glance. And the “Projects” and “Features” tabs are consistent visual tools you can quickly familiarize yourself with for added efficiency.

The “User stories” and “Activity log” are where you track your clients’ and users’ journeys, gather feedback, and pass it on to other team members. There’s even a section specific to QA testing so your backend and front-end teams always know what to improve.

As the name suggests, the Project & Tasks template is the ultimate tracker for managing all of your project lifecycles. The "Tasks" database provides a thorough summary of each workflow, allowing you to keep track of team leaders, task statuses, and due dates.

The "Projects" database links to each task your team’s working on, and the changes they make in one spreadsheet will affect the other so you never miss an edit. You can add as many project plans as you like, with each board describing deadlines, designated team members, and the overall progress.

With work projects, time trackers, and a calendar, this template lets you maintain a log of your current and completed work. You can sort them in order of importance and delegate team members to work on different tasks. Progress bars tell you where you are in your journey, and you can check a box when you're done with each project.

The "Time Tracker" board helps you monitor how long you spend on each activity so you don't meander. The progress tracker lets you keep tabs on long-term goals and whether you’re on track to meet them with an easy-to-read percentage. And to top it all off, each board is easily viewable in the calendar.

Agile project management is a non-linear approach that focuses on breaking up larger tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. This template allows you to create dedicated boards for each department within an Agile project, and anyone on the team can check backlogs and monitor your personal projects with the "Mine" tab.

This Agile template is best for software developers and engineers, but it’s excellent for any industry or niche that works on complex projects. You can create personalized task boards at the top of the template and add colored tags for easy organization, regardless of profession or working style.

Whether you're weighing the pros and cons of a potential project or attempting to win over skeptical stakeholders, this analysis template is perfect for deciding where to place your priorities or cut your costs.

Streamlining and automating your cost-benefit analysis with this project management tool allows you to visualize costs, inflation rates, and returns on investment (ROI) for any upcoming assignment. It’s clear to read and analyze, equipping you with every factor you need to determine how much value you get from a project.

This project management plan template focuses on objectives and key results (OKRs) — factors that outline ambitious, time-bound objectives and the steps you need to take to accomplish them. OKRs supply a larger framework for developing the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can set to track individual, group, and company goals.

The “Objectives” tab expands to display quarterly goals, while the “Projects/PRD” panel provides a list, board, and tabular appearances, depending on your viewing preferences. And progress bars measure project timelines, which you can rank in order of priority. 

As you incorporate these project management templates into your daily workflow, you'll be equipped to handle projects of all shapes and sizes. With Notion, you can find more tools to nurture success and ensure your planners and tools tick all the boxes on your project management checklist.

From thousands of project planning templates to work calendars, Notion has everything you need to execute any workflow — and do it with ease. Whether you're looking for a project scope or timeline template, you'll find it here.