Templates

Templates speed up recurring planning and protect standards. Expert use of templates does not start with the command to save a project as a template. It starts with the decision which project structures should be standardised.

Create a new project from a template

What Is Suitable For Templates

Suitable:

  • recurring project phases

  • standard subprojects

  • recurring activity groups

  • standard milestones

  • offer or order structures

  • typical link chains and approval steps

Not suitable:

  • one-off special plans

  • outdated resource or calendar data

  • project plans with concrete employees that are not generally valid

  • templates without an owner

  • templates that contain unreviewed dates, costs, or notes

File Templates Or Server Templates

File templates

Suitable for individual project managers and local planning. They are quick to use but require manual control to avoid divergent local versions.

Integration Server templates

Suitable for organisations with several planners, PMO standards, central resource data, and controlled permissions.

Template Quality Check

Before using or publishing a template, check:

  • Are activity names current and result-oriented?

  • Are links technically and logically correct?

  • Are roles or professional qualifications used instead of old named employee assignments?

  • Does the template match the current resource pool?

  • Are dates relative enough to be reused?

  • Are costs, notes, user-defined fields, and calendars still valid?

  • Does the template include only the level of detail needed for recurring work?

Saving A Project As Template

Before saving a project as a template, remove data that should not become part of the standard.

Recommended cleanup:

  • remove concrete employee assignments when the template should be qualification-based

  • remove obsolete progress values and actual values

  • check baselines and delete those that do not belong to the template

  • clean notes, external links, and documents

  • verify calendars and non-working days

Governance

For central templates, define:

  • business owner

  • change process

  • approval process

  • versioning rules

  • valid scope

  • storage location

  • review interval

Typical Mistakes

  • Templates contain old named employee assignments.

  • Local template copies develop in different directions.

  • PMO standards are documented elsewhere but not built into templates.

  • A template is inserted but not checked against current calendars, resources, and dates.

  • Users treat a copied project as a template although it contains project- specific data.