While I cannot share specific details of the slideshow’s contents or purpose due to confidentiality, this project aimed to improve an existing presentation used to track interdepartmental progress on developing a new fleet of trucks for a client. The original slideshow suffered from legibility and cohesion issues as it was difficult to tell which departments depended on one another, how far along each was in meeting milestones, and whether delays in one area might affect another’s timeline.

During an early meeting, I observed that although the timelines in the slideshow were generated using Timeline Pro, team members were manually updating the table’s information. Aside from informal communication between departments, there was no official interdepartmental project plan for this extensive two-year initiative. The absence of dependency tracking made it difficult to visualize workflow connections or identify potential bottlenecks between teams. So, while my initial task was simply to enhance the slideshow’s appearance, further research led me to develop a more efficient and sustainable solution using Microsoft Project Professional.

Project Professional is not only a great tool to track tasks, deadlines, completion percentages, and dependecienes, but also can be used as a live spreadsheet to feed information into Timeline Pro. So, I created standarized templates for each department to complete, scheduled one of one meetings with each department lead to fully flesh out the subtasks needed to complete each major goal, and then had a large meeting with all leads to link interdepartmental dependencies. Once each team finalized its individual project plan, I compiled them into a parent document that integrated all child files. This new system provided complete transparency into interdepartmental workflows and ensured that all data remained synchronized. Any updates made to an individual department’s file would automatically cascade into the parent document and, in turn, update the data on Timeline Pro—eliminating the need for manual updates and ensuring the presentation always reflected real-time project progress.

With this structure in place, I finalized the slideshow by dividing the presentation into three distinct focuses. The first was a comprehensive project timeline displaying all departments’ major deliverables and key deadlines (this slide was primarily used in customer meetings to report overall progress). The second offered a mid-level view that highlighted each department’s milestones, dependencies, and completion percentages (most often used in meetings with our general manager). The third provided a detailed breakdown of the specific action steps required to achieve those milestones, serving as an internal reference for departments to keep team members accountable.