Gantt Chart Maker
Type the dates, link what waits for what, and the chart draws itself with the longest chain picked out. Exports to Excel, PowerPoint and Mermaid.
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Start from a real example
Pick one and change it to fit. Everything stays on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
| Task | Starts | Days | Owner | Row actions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 tasks over 0 days. 0 of them are on the longest chain.
What this plan is telling you
- Nothing in the plan yet. Write the tasks first; the dates are easier once they exist.
Frequently asked questions
The questions people actually ask about this document.
- What is a Gantt chart?
- A plan drawn as bars on a calendar: one row per task, length for how long it takes, and lines of dependency between them. Henry Gantt popularised it around 1910. Its single real advantage over a list of dates is that you can see overlap and sequence at a glance, which is also the only reason to draw one.
- How detailed should it be?
- Tasks of about a week, and no more than can be read on one screen. The temptation is to break everything down until the chart is the work, and at that point it takes longer to maintain than to do the project. If a bar runs for forty days it cannot be reported on, because it is either on track or late with nothing in between, and it is usually four tasks nobody wanted to name.
- Are dependencies worth the trouble?
- For the handful that are real, yes, and that is what makes it a plan rather than a picture of one. A dependency is what lets the chart say that a date is wrong before anybody notices in week two. Adding one between every pair of tasks is the common failure: the chart then has no slack anywhere and every change rearranges everything.
- Does this show the critical path?
- It shows the longest chain of dependencies, highlighted, which is the honest version of the same idea. A real critical path accounts for float and for people being on two tasks at once, and neither is modelled here. What is highlighted is the set of tasks where a one-day slip moves the end date, which is what most people mean when they ask.
- Does it skip weekends and holidays?
- No. Days are calendar days, and a five-day task spans five days whichever days they are. Working calendars vary by country, by company and by person, and a tool that guessed yours would be wrong quietly rather than loudly. If weekends matter to your plan, add the slack to the task length where you can see it.
- How do I keep it from going stale?
- Update it at a meeting that already exists, and only move the bars that moved. A Gantt chart goes stale faster than any other document here, and a chart nobody has updated is worse than no chart because people still believe it. If maintaining it is taking longer than the status conversation it feeds, the plan has too many tasks in it.