In 2012 I took over my first big IT project.

A $1,5 million system implementation at one of the largest industrial firms. We’d replace the existing ERP system of the client with our new solution. It was a business critical system and hundreds of people were using it every day.

“I can’t afford to mess this up”, I told myself.

I was nervous about getting started.

But I was also excited.

This was my first real project manager role: I wasn’t going to be involved in the actual doing and could delegate everything to my team.

“The client is expecting to meet you next week. They want to get started with the project”, my manager told me

Wow!

This meant I’d have to show something — an action plan that made sense, a cost estimate I could present with confidence, an overview of who was going to do what.

But I was just 2 weeks in my new position and I didn’t know where to start.

Also, I didn’t have any good templates I could use.

Nor did I know what documents I actually had to prepare.

So I googled for templates on the web.

But the stuff I found just sucked.

The worst experience I had was with a budgeting spreadsheet I had found somewhere.

The template had a 20-row limit

After having spent hours plugging in my numbers into the sheet, I realized the sheet had a limit for 20 rows. That meant I couldn’t enter the planned effort for all of my team members, which were 35 people.

To make matters worse, the file had a password on and I couldn’t unlock it to make it fit my needs.

While I was fumbling with the sheet on that fateful Sunday, my family was enjoying tarts and coffee on the balcony.

“Adrian, would you like another piece?” my mother-in-law asked.

“Thank you, but I have to finish this work today” I replied with an absent mind.

I never managed to unlock the template.

And the Excel sheet ruined my entire weekend.

And I still had no solution for costing my project.

So I told myself:

“An Excel template is never going to ruin my weekend again”

As I couldn’t find the kind of templates I felt comfortable using, I decided to create them myself.

Even if it would take me a couple of days.

So I set down and built my own templates from scratch.

I started by asking myself basic questions:

• How can I draw a schedule everybody will understand?
• How can I make sure I don’t forget any important details?
• How can I always keep a good overview, even if the project gets messy?
• How can I plan and track project expenses, even if I hate working with numbers?

Those kinds of questions.

I also made sure the templates looked nice.

Because at the end of the day, the templates would be shown to my managers.

And if they looked messy, that’s probably what they’d think of me too.

Once I had created the templates, there came the next step.

I tested the templates

I began sharing the project templates with colleagues and friends. I also put them up for download on Tactical Project Manager.

I asked everybody who downloaded the templates if they liked them or not.

The feedback was very positive.

I got dozens of emails from folks thanking me for sharing the documents:

If people had good suggestions, I implemented them right away.

Today, the templates are used all across the globe at top companies like Apple and Amazon

And today I am offering you the templates for download.

I’ve used them for almost a decade now, and they have been my “survival kit” in dozens of tough projects.

All my projects were a success. The templates played a huge role in that. Because without them, I would have struggled to keep a good overview.