This section follows the lifecycle of a project in Linear, from the initial planning phase to implementation. We demonstrate how to plan and document your project, collaborate with teammates, and report on progress.
Your project overview is the source of truth for your project. It contains everything from your project spec to customer requests, external resources, and ongoing updates.
Project planning
As early as the ideation phase, you can start collecting information and ideas in a Linear project.
- Take notes and organize your thoughts in the project overview
- As your project progresses, link to external resources such as design files, spreadsheets, or meeting notes
- Keep the voice of your customer top-of-mind by tracking customer requests
Project templates simplify project creation by pre-filling the project description, milestones, issues, and properties. Here’s an example of a Product Requirements Document (PRD) that our team uses.
At this point, your project properties might just look like this: [image of project properties with status: idea, lead: you, due date: Q4 2026].
Collaboration and Implementation
When you’re ready to start building, loop your teammates in by commenting them into your project overview, adding them as members, and assigning them to issues.
To go from idea to implementation even faster, convert bullet points into issues and paragraphs into linked documents just by highlighting them in your project overview.
Set your project timeline by first mapping major deadlines onto milestones. Then, add issues to each milestone and use those to inform due dates for each issue.
At this point, be sure to update your project properties with the correct status, target date, and initiative, and add the key stakeholders and teams you’ll be collaborating with.
Updates
As you continue to build, keep the rest of your team in the loop by posting project updates and maintaining your project properties.
Project updates are qualitative updates written regularly by the project lead. They provide a high-level brief of your project to teammates across your organization. Use these to capture decisions made, blockers, and adjustments to your timeline and project scope.
To gain even more visibility into work across your team, broadcast project updates to Slack.
Ask Linear to scope and create project starting points for you.