How to Create a Gantt chart
A Gantt chart is a project management tool used for charting the various activities associated
with that project against a specific timeline. The chart provides a visual guide to start and end
dates on different activities, statuses of the activities, and whether or not they are complete.
Gantt charts can also show how different activities are related to one another and how the
completion or delay of one milestone might affect the others. With one quick glance, you can see
how a project is performing relative to the allotted timeline and budget. Because Gantt charts
provide so much information in a simple visual, they can be incredibly useful for both project
managers and key stakeholders alike.
When might I use a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is most often used when you create, or are managing, any kind of strategic project
that has many tasks associated with it. Project managers use them as a way to consolidate all of
the pieces to a project into one view, so they can give the management team, and the team
assigned to the project, a better understanding of how the pieces all fit together.
A Gantt chart allows you to visually lay out the logistics of when certain tasks can begin.
Consider this: If task B cannot begin until task A is complete—and task A takes at least two
weeks to complete—we can’t begin task B for at least two weeks. So the project will take a
minimum of two weeks, plus the length of completion for task B. This seems simple enough
when we discuss it this way, but it can be very confusing when you have many dependencies in
the works and need to allocate your team’s time as effectively as possible.
How To Create A Gantt Chart
Step 1: Begin with a project or initiative in mind.
You might not know how long it’s going to take to complete the project at this point. Let’s say,
for example, that you want to roll out your new employee training program, but don’t yet know
what needs to go into it.
Step 2: Assess the current plan for this project in place.
You’ll want to look at every single step, from initiation to rollout, so you can get a clear idea of
everyone who will need to be involved. This is what you’ll use to determine timelines.
Step 3: Determine which tasks are dependent on one another.
Some tasks can be completed simultaneously and some cannot begin until another has finished.
Understanding this will help you understand time associated with each step and when the steps
should take place.
Step 4: Compile your task time frames in a Gantt chart layout.
This is where software is extremely helpful. It allows you to enter start and end tasks and then
automatically builds out the Gantt chart for you so you can see how long each project will take
and share it across your organization. During this step, you may also realize that some milestones
are too involved and are best broken down into sub milestones.
Step 5: Add additional information, accountability, budget, description, etc.
It is usually a good idea to include information that will help viewers understand each
component of the project. The downside here is that you want to keep your Gantt chart
uncluttered, and there typically isn’t much room for descriptions, analysis, or recommendations.
Some software solutions make accommodations for this by allowing you to create detail pages
for each component that can be included in the report and navigated to if necessary. (Personally,
we find this incredibly useful for project status meetings.)
Step 6: Break down your budget.
Now that everything is organized for you, you can start breaking down your budget for the
project based on milestones. Once you’ve allocated a budget, you should get a more clear idea of
whether you will complete the budget above or below what you’ve anticipated.
Step 7: Assign ownership.
Every component of a project should have an owner. When people take ownership of or
responsibility for a task, they’re more likely to ensure that it’s completed on time and it’s of
expected quality. If there are a number of contributors, it’s useful to include their names as
contributors on the Gantt chart.
Step 8: Continuously use your Gantt chart as a reference.
As time goes on and you’re working through your project, you should be using your Gantt chart
as a reference as much as possible. It will allow you to assess the current status of your different
components and determine what those statuses mean for project completion. This is why the
Gantt chart is so critical to begin with—because having a snapshot view of how everything is
going is very important.
Sample Gantt Charts
You can create one of two types of Gantt charts: One that shows all of your projects or one that
shows related information for a single project. While the chart layout is essentially same, the
uses of the two types of charts are very different. Primarily, the high-level organizational Gantt
chart is used at cross-departmental or C-level meetings, where the project-specific Gantt is used
with one team or in one particular department.
High-Level Organizational Gantt Chart
When you need to show a high-level view of your organization's projects—where you only see
the names and statuses of each project—this is the type of Gantt you'd create.
This Gantt can be very useful from the perspective of chief strategy officer, or, per our example
of "Metropolis City," a city manager. Knowing what key initiatives are behind schedule and
which are at risk makes it easier for managers to redistribute resources appropriately. The
example below gives you an example of the enterprise-level projects for a local municipality and
some of its departments.
Project-Specific Gantt
You'd want to use a project-specific Gantt to show one expanded project, all the details
associated with it, and how they're related to one another. You'll notice in the example that the
name of the project is at the top, and you can see the relationship between each milestone and
sub milestone.
The project-specific Gantt chart typically has a departmental audience. It's especially useful if
budgets or timelines need to be moved around, as the department can typically work together to
figure out how to make the necessary adjustments. From the perspective of the project manager,
a Gantt chart can be a lifesaver of a tool. Project managers can get as detailed as they want with
each project, tracking every milestone and sub milestones timeline and status.
Here is a basic sample example of an employee training initiative with its milestones open for
further evaluation.
Evaluating Your Gantt Charts
To evaluate, some companies choose to use a complex method for every component of the
project—but that’s not what we recommend. Instead, at the end of each period, have the owner:
• Write out an analysis based on the RAG status.
• Apply a status icon that is easily understood by everyone viewing the project. (This
should be linked to the analysis mentioned above, so that the individual is held
accountable. But because there are so many components in each project, complete
analysis can be difficult. So we recommend that you look at current milestone statuses to
determine your percent complete, whether you’re ahead, behind, or right on schedule, and
an analysis of the budget status.)
• Include some recommendations so the team knows what needs to happen going forward.
Gantt Chart Generators & Software: What To Look For
A Gantt chart can be an incredibly effective tool for managing your projects and keeping your
subprojects and milestones organized. If you are considering creating one, our recommendation
is to look for a Gantt chart generator or software that makes your charts more dynamic and offers
automatic updates. Generators and software typically allow you to have many more fields than a
simple Excel chart may allow for, including fields for statuses, viewing analysis, and
recommendations.
To find a solution that best suits your needs and the needs of your organization, you may want to
look for the following features.
1. Ability to track status and percentage complete: Having the colors changing within the
bars on the Gantt charts (depending on the status of the project) is something you may
find useful. Some Gantt chart generators and software will update your statuses and
percentage complete automatically, which is ideal. Be sure to check and see if this feature
is available!
2. Ability to show visual aids within the chart: Aside from bar colors, there are other
visual cues you may take from your Gantt chart if it's an advanced software. Some may
show outline indentations, for example, to demonstrate whether something is a parent
milestone or a sub milestone. Remember, there's a lot going on in a Gantt chart—and you
want your meetings to be as efficient as possible. We can’t emphasize enough how
important it is to have a well-designed Gantt chart that is easily deciphered.
3. Ability to show dependencies: One thing people look and ask for is the ability to show
that one milestone is dependent on the completion of the next. For example, if milestone
B is 100% dependent on the completion of milestone A and milestone A is delayed, the
start date of milestone B is updated accordingly and delayed as well. This may not matter
to you, but if your organization depends on this, it's worth noting.
Note: Before you begin looking, you should ask yourself (and your co-workers) what purpose
you want the Gantt chart to serve. If you want it for the sake of example—or to simply act as an
outline—some advanced features may be unnecessary. But if you want to use it as a project
management guide, you'll want to ensure it has every bell and whistle you need.
Considerations While Using A Gantt Chart
Changing Start & End Dates
Start and end dates for the project are usually contingent on the first task’s earliest possible start
date—and the end date is usually a sum of the expected length of all of the tasks, with an extra
cushion of time for any unexpected delays. But when start and end dates change, it is usually
good practice to look at the other components of the project and adjust them accordingly. It is
also important to keep everyone with a stake in the project informed of these changes and how
they might affect their own portion of the project.
You should also have a written policy about how changes to the end date and budget affect the
RAG status. If the building of a tunnel through your city is several years and several billion
dollars over the original timeline and budget, but is completed within the revised budget and
timeline, is it show either green or red.
Budget & Effectiveness
Using a Gantt chart isn’t just helpful for determining project timelines—it also helps the team
understand how resources should be allocated. This is especially true for the limited resource of
budget. Seeing all of the components laid out together allows the project planners to see where
the budget needs to be distributed, which can decrease wasteful spending. But this project can
also work the other way around and can be helpful in determining the budget needed for a
proposed project. Each component can be assessed separately, allowing you to then sum each
subproject to determine what the overall project would need to be.
The Advantages and Limitations of Gantt Charts in Project Management
Why Is a Gantt Chart Important?
A Gantt chart uses timelines to represent the completion of each task in a project. These
timelines show how the tasks relate to one other. Gantt charts are useful because they provide an
overview of a project’s activities and progress.
Gantt charts indicate how work on a task can begin only after the completion of a related task.
Such information helps managers understand project hurdles and make critical decisions about
the best way to move a project forward.
The Advantages of Gantt Charts
A Gantt chart gives managers and workers a high-level overview of the project tasks they must
complete, along with a timetable to finish their work. The chart helps you monitor the project’s
progress by showing how tasks relate to each other.
The Main Benefits of Gantt Charts
A key benefit of a Gantt chart is its ability to show a top-line perspective of a project. Gantt
charts help workers and managers track tasks; managers can also use them to allocate resources
wisely in order to finish a project.
Here are some of the main benefits of Gantt charts:
• It Provides a High-Level Overview: A Gantt chart provides an overall perspective of a
project and its timeline — for both those who are deeply involved and those with less
participation, such as executives and other stakeholders.
A Gantt chart is visually appealing and easy to understand. It provides critical
information about tasks at a glance, including the order in which they begin and their
duration.
• It Improves Efficiency and Helps Manage Resources: A Gantt chart can help ensure
that leaders and workers manage their time and resources effectively. Project leaders can
use it to set realistic schedules and allocate resources based on those schedules, including
assigning the right people to the right tasks. It can also help project members come up
with workarounds for potential problems before a project starts.
• It Allows for Better Tracking: A Gantt chart enables project leaders and members to
closely track tasks, benchmarks, and overall workflow. The chart can reveal possible
constraints or issues and allow project leaders and members to adjust accordingly.
• It Illustrates Overlaps and Dependencies: A Gantt chart clearly communicates how
tasks in a project might overlap. It also shows how the beginning of one task can be
dependent on the completion of another task. That kind of information allows project
leaders to schedule work and provide resources in a way that doesn’t impede the progress
of a project.
• It Boosts Productivity: A Gantt chart allows for collaboration among workers to boost
their productivity. The high-level visibility of a Gantt chart helps people stay focused on
the tasks they must complete. That visibility also ensures the accountability of all team
members regarding their tasks.
• It Allows You to Balance Multiple Projects: A Gantt chart allows managers to easily
track multiple projects. It then enables those managers to balance the work on each
project because the chart indicates how to provide the right resources at the right time.
• It Makes Complex Information Manageable: The visual clarity that a Gantt chart
provides can help simplify a complex set of tasks. The chart displays tasks clearly and
simply for the people who must do the work. Such transparency enables team members to
stay focused and avoid becoming overwhelmed by a large number of tasks.
• It Helps You Set Realistic Deadlines and Expectations: A Gantt chart lays out all the
tasks that a team must accomplish in order to complete a project. The chart also illustrates
the relationships and dependencies among those tasks. Such coherent visual
communication allows for a realistic view of the time it takes to complete the work.
Consequently, having access to such accurate information allows you to set realistic
deadlines for each task and for the entire project.
• It Helps Keep Everyone Aligned, Including Remote Workers: When everyone on a
project team (including remote workers and those in other offices) has easy access to the
same information, all work on the project remains aligned. The chart improves
communication and collaboration among everyone.
• It Motivates Team Members: A Gantt chart enables team members to visualize their
tasks, thereby motivating them to do their work on the project. Team members can view
the project moving forward and watch other members completing their tasks. The chart
also shows how certain tasks can’t begin until another task is completed. All that
visibility enables people to complete their tasks well and on time.
The Disadvantages of Gantt Charts
Gantt charts aren’t perfect. Setup can be time consuming. With large projects, the number of
tasks and their details can complicate the chart and make it difficult to understand.
The Main Challenges of Gantt Charts
One of the primary challenges when using Gantt charts is their complexity in large projects. The
charts can also fail to represent the complexities of certain tasks and the time your team requires
to complete them.
Here are some of the main challenges of Gantt charts:
• Setup Can Be Time Consuming: Setting up a Gantt chart for a complex project can be
convoluted and time consuming. Software can help.
• They Can Become Complex and Confusing: A Gantt chart for a large project with
many tasks and subtasks can become complicated. Adding even more tasks or making
changes to the schedule affects the entire chart. When your organization doesn’t use
software to help, repeatedly reworking the Gantt chart can become difficult.
The chart loses some of its value when it becomes too complicated. One of the
advantages of a Gantt chart is its ability to depict a project and its tasks at a glance. When
the project description expands to cover hundreds of tasks over multiple pages, you lose
such an advantage.
• They Don’t Designate Priorities: Gantt charts focus on presenting the tasks in a project,
the order of those tasks, and the approximate time it takes to complete them. The charts
don’t show the priority of the particular tasks you need to complete for the project to be a
success. With such an omission, team members might not understand those priorities the
way they should.
• They Don’t Offer Much Detail Regarding Task Dependencies: Gantt charts can show
how you must complete one task before starting another one. But they don’t provide
much detail concerning all of the dependencies within a particular task for a project.
• Task Bars Do Not Show the Amount of Work That Each Task Requires: The length
of a Gantt chart task bar shows the amount of time it might take to finish a task. But that
length doesn’t indicate the specific resources that such a task requires.
Some tasks with short bars (representing short deadlines) might require significant
resources. Some tasks with long bars might require minimal resources. The Gantt chart
can be misleading when it comes to representing the amount of work and resources you
require. Thus, in order to correctly allocate and monitor resources, you might need to use
other tools in addition to the Gantt chart.
When Should You Use a Gantt Chart?
You should use a Gantt chart when your team is embarking on a project that includes a variety of
tasks that several people must perform. A Gantt chart can help you move a large project forward
more efficiently.
However, there are times when you may want to use a simpler tool in order to show a project
overview. These tools include a project timeline and a project calendar.
How Is a Gantt Chart Useful?
Gantt charts help you organize projects, improve overall project visibility, and keep everyone on
track. Gantt charts also help managers provide resources when and where they need them. And
they encourage collaboration among project team members.
Gantt charts can help project managers do the following:
1. Determine all necessary tasks, think through a project plan, and better define the scope of
a project to increase clarity.
2. Identify when tasks need to be completed, and determine predecessors and dependencies.
3. Discover a project’s critical path to identify the most important tasks that you
must deliver on time.
4. Keep your team informed about progress or changes, and eliminate the need for constant
status updates and meetings.
5. Simplify complex tasks by organizing projects into smaller, digestible segments along a
visual timeline.
6. Allocate resources across the multiple simultaneous tasks in a project, and assign the
right people to the right tasks.
7. Plan project iterations or sprints, especially in software development.
8. Track and compare planned versus actual timelines, and ensure that those planned
timelines are reasonable and achievable.
9. Facilitate collaboration among stakeholders and team members.
10. Identify overdue tasks and take proactive measures to mitigate issues.
11. Shorten the setup, maintenance, and communication involved in projects, both large and
small.
