How to make a Gantt chart
To make a Gantt chart, list the tasks, estimate each one in working days, place them on a calendar in the order they can happen, group them into phases and mark the milestones. The steps are the same in a spreadsheet or in Gantt software. This guide takes each step in turn, works through a ten-week example and compares the tools you might build it in.
By the NeoGantt team · Updated
The 7 elements of a Gantt chart
Most definitions list seven. You can collect all of them before you open a tool, and the chart goes faster if you do.
| Element | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks | A piece of work with a clear finish. One row each. | Wireframes |
| Start and end dates | These set where the bar sits and how long it is. | 3 Nov to 14 Nov |
| Duration | How long the task takes, counted in working days. | 10 days |
| Phases (groups) | Related tasks under one heading, so forty rows read as four or five blocks. | Design |
| Milestones | A single date with no length: an approval, a launch, a deadline. | Design approved |
| Owners | Who does the task. Most useful when it’s someone outside your team. | Client: feedback |
| Progress (optional) | How far through the task you are, once work starts. | 60% |
How to make a Gantt chart, step by step
The steps are the same on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in Gantt chart software.
- Fix the end point. Write down what “done” means and the date it has to happen by. A plan without an end date tends to grow.
- List the work. Break the project into tasks of between a couple of days and two weeks. Longer tasks hide problems; shorter ones turn the chart into a to-do list.
- Group tasks into phases. Discovery, design, build, launch; or plan, produce, run, report. Four to six phases covers most projects.
- Estimate durations in working days. Ask the person doing the work. Count working days, or every estimate that crosses a weekend comes out short.
- Put the tasks in order. For each task, ask what has to finish before it can start, and place it after that. Overlap the ones that can run in parallel.
- Add milestones. Approvals, handovers and the launch. These are the dates people remember and ask about.
- Mark who owns what. Label tasks owned by someone outside your team: a client, a supplier, legal. Most slips happen in those handoffs.
- Check it against the calendar. Block out public holidays and leave. Look for weeks where one person has three bars at once. Move things until the plan is believable.
- Share it and keep it current. Send it to everyone involved and update it when things change. When dates move, note what changed and why.
Worked example: a ten-week website project
Here are the nine steps applied to a small website build for a client, the kind of job an agency quotes every month.
- End point: go-live in week 10, because the client’s campaign starts the week after.
- The work: eight tasks, from a two-day kickoff workshop to fourteen days of development.
- Phases: discovery, design, build and launch.
- Estimates: the developer said “just under three weeks” for the build, which gets written down as fourteen working days.
- Order: wireframes wait for the sitemap; visual design starts while the last wireframes are being finished.
- Milestones: discovery sign-off, design approved and go live.
- Owners: one task belongs to the client, their design feedback, and it sits directly before the milestone it unlocks.
- Calendar check: a public holiday falls in week 8, so the build’s end date moves a day later while the estimate stays at fourteen working days. Nobody has two big tasks in the same week.
- Share: the client gets a link to the live plan, and the version agreed at kickoff is saved to compare against later.
Row by row, the chart lists this. Weeks are counted from kickoff.
| Phase | Task | Starts | Working days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Kickoff workshop | Week 1 | 2 |
| Stakeholder interviews | Week 1 | 4 | |
| Sitemap and content plan | Week 2 | 5 | |
| Milestone: discovery sign-off | Week 3 | – | |
| Design | Wireframes | Week 3 | 7 |
| Visual design | Week 4 | 8 | |
| Client feedback (client-owned) | Week 6 | 4 | |
| Milestone: design approved | Week 6 | – | |
| Build | Development | Week 7 | 14 |
| Launch | QA and testing | Week 9 | 5 |
| Milestone: go live | Week 10 | – |
Drawn as bars, that’s eleven rows across ten weeks, and a client can find the launch date and their own feedback window in seconds. Below is the fuller version from our website project template, with content supply and user testing also marked as the client’s.
- Discovery
- Kickoff workshop
- Stakeholder interviews
- Sitemap & content plan
- Content & brand assets suppliedclient
- Discovery sign-off
- Design
- Wireframes
- Visual design
- Design review & feedbackclient
- Design approved
- Build
- Front-end development
- CMS setup & integrations
- Content entry
- Launch
- QA & browser testing
- User acceptance testingclient
- Go live 🚀
- Post-launch fixes
Open this example in the editor and drag it onto your own dates; you can try it before signing up.
Which tool should you use to make a Gantt chart?
The steps don’t change between tools. What changes is how painful it is to move things once the plan exists, and how easily other people can see it.
| Tool | Good for | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Paper or whiteboard | A first rough pass in a workshop. | Can’t be shared or changed without redrawing it. |
| Excel or Google Sheets | People who already live in spreadsheets; one-off plans. | Bars are faked with stacked charts or shaded cells, and moving a task means retyping dates. See making a Gantt chart in Excel and in Google Sheets. |
| PowerPoint or Keynote | A single slide for a presentation. | It’s a drawing, so every date change is a redesign. |
| Dedicated Gantt software | Plans that change, get shared and go in front of clients. | Another tool to learn. Some are simple Gantt chart software; others are full schedulers with dependencies and critical path. |
| Project management suites | Teams that also need task boards, workload, time tracking and integrations. | The Gantt view is one feature among many, often on a paid tier, and it needs setup. |
If your project has long chains of dependent work, a scheduler such as Microsoft Project will recalculate dates for you; NeoGantt vs Microsoft Project sets out where each one fits. Our comparison hub covers the other tools, including when a full suite is the better call.
Mistakes that make Gantt charts useless
- Too much detail. Two hundred one-hour tasks is a to-do list. Keep rows at the level a stakeholder cares about.
- Calendar days instead of working days. A five-day task that starts on Thursday finishes the following Wednesday, not on Monday.
- No milestones. Nobody can tell which dates are fixed and which can slide.
- Invisible outside dependencies. If the client owes you content by week three, put it on the chart where they’ll see it.
- Sending a screenshot. It’s out of date the first time a date moves. Share something that updates, and keep a record of what changed.
Can ChatGPT make a Gantt chart?
Partly. An AI assistant can turn a project description into a task list with dates, or write chart code (Mermaid is the usual choice) that renders a basic Gantt diagram. That’s a quick first draft. Check the dates it gives you, especially around weekends and holidays. The output is static: to move a task you ask again and regenerate the lot. For a plan other people will rely on, take the task list into a tool where you can drag, share and update it.
Start from a template instead of a blank page
Pick a Gantt chart template close to your project and reshape it; the phases and durations are usually most of the way there. If the chart is going to a client, read how to share a Gantt chart with clients before you send it.