About Project Templates

Project templates-- which contain commonly re-used components of projects such as folders, bookmarks, and WBS tasks--provide the ability to establish a common structure from which projects can be created. This common structure makes it easier for Project Leads to create projects and lets your company standardize on improvements and best practices. To provide flexibility in the template, the tasks in the project template's WBS can be associated with questions. The system creates tasks based on the project creator's answers to the questions.

Related Topics
About Projects

All Program Central users can view templates for their company but only Project Administrators and External Project Administrators can create project templates.

Once a project is created based on a template, changes to the template do not affect the project. For example, if you create a project based on a template that has 2 bookmarks, those bookmarks are copied to the project. However if you subsequently add a third bookmark to the template, the added bookmark is not copied to the project.

The creation of a project template involves the creation of the basic template information, the creation and association of a WBS, followed by the creation and association of questions to the tasks in the WBS.

Project templates include a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). When a person creates a project based on a project template, the template's entire WBS is automatically included in the new project. Alternatively, a Project Lead can copy all of a WBS from a project template to any level of the project's WBS.

The WBS for a project template is similar to the WBS for a project except a template WBS has no dates associated with it and therefore also has none of the metrics and status indicators associated with dates. The following is a list of the differences between the WBS for a template and a project. Aside from these differences, you manage the WBS for a template in the same way you manage a project WBS.

Features included for a project WBS but not for a project template WBS are:


  • Baseline
  • Status flags (green, yellow, red) that indicate whether the task or project is on time or late
  • Estimated start and finish dates (a template WBS only has an estimated duration)
  • Actual start and finish dates
  • % Complete
  • Owner
  • Assignees
  • Approvals
  • Risks
  • Routes
  • Ability to mark a task for deletion (can only delete permanently)

You can assign a question to the task for a project template WBS, but not for a project WBS; see Listing Questions for a Project Template.