Gantt Studio

#TaskStartEndDays

Task Critical path (no float) Baseline Today Drag the right edge of a bar to change its duration.

Project sheet

A report-style chart with work packages, partners, period columns, deliverables and milestones. Download it as an Excel file you can edit, or as an image or PDF.

Columns are Highlight periods Dependency arrows Partner column Duration and milestone columns Note above the chart (for example, why a period is highlighted)

Mark rows as work packages, deliverables or milestones in the task editor on the Planner. Owners appear as partners. The Excel file keeps colours and can be edited, but it does not include the arrows.

Risk register

Score each risk by probability and impact (1 to 5). Scores of 15 or more are high. Closed risks stay in the list but leave the matrix.

Probability and impact

Workload

How many tasks each owner has running in each week, taken from the schedule. Set owners on the Planner. Weeks above the limit turn red.

Max tasks at once

Budget and earned value

Enter a budget and the cost so far for each task. Earned value compares what you planned to have done, what you have done and what it cost.

Currency

Planned spend against today

Decisions and changes

Record what was decided and why, and every request to change scope, time or cost.

Decision log

Change requests

Status report

Built from your schedule, budget, risks and logs. Nothing to fill in.

How a Gantt chart works

A Gantt chart lists the work on the left and lays it against a calendar on the right. Each task is a bar. Where the bar starts, how long it runs and where it ends tell you when the work happens.

At a glance you can see what the activities are, when each begins and ends, how long each lasts, where they overlap, and when the whole project finishes. In short, it shows what has to be done and when.

Build one in six steps

Review the scope

Start from the approved scope statement and work breakdown structure (WBS). Check that together they cover 100% of the work, nothing missing and nothing extra.

Break the work into activities

Split each WBS work package into activities. Too many makes the plan unreadable, too few hides risk. Mark deadlines and milestones now.

Sequence them

Decide what must happen before what. Finish-to-start means B cannot begin until A ends. Start-to-start lets them run in parallel. Finish-to-finish and start-to-finish exist but are rare.

Estimate resources

List the people, materials and equipment each activity needs, and when they are available.

Estimate durations

Use the resources and constraints to estimate how long each activity takes. Analogous, parametric, three-point and bottom-up estimates all work.

Build, buffer and baseline

Enter everything into the chart, add buffers for risk, level over-used people, get approval, then save the result as the baseline you measure against.

Run the project with it

Status. Owners report progress as percent complete, or with earned value, which measures the worth of work actually done. Percent complete is quick but subjective.

Critical path. This is the longest chain of linked tasks. It has zero float, so any delay on it moves the finish date by the same amount. Watch it first.

When you slip. Compare actual with baseline. To recover time without cutting scope you can fast-track (overlap tasks, which adds risk) or crash (add people, which adds cost). If neither is enough, raise a change request and re-baseline.

Forecast. Estimate-to-complete and estimate-at-completion turn today's progress into an expected end date and cost.

Where it came from

Karol Adamiecki, a Polish engineer running a steelworks, sketched the first version in the 1890s. About fifteen years later the American consultant Henry Gantt published his own, which spread through the West and gave the chart its name. Both were drawn by hand, so every change meant a redraw. Software removed that cost, which is why the chart is now the standard way to show a project schedule.

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Milestone	A zero-length marker for an event, such as approval or launch.
Float (slack)	How long a task can slip before it delays the finish.
Lag / lead	A planned gap (lag) or overlap (lead) between linked tasks.
Baseline	The approved plan, frozen so you can measure variance.
Buffer	Extra time with no scope, added to absorb risk.

What changed from the original site

The original is a set of explanatory pages that sends you to a separate desktop product. This studio keeps the same teaching and puts the working chart on the page.

Area	Original site	Gantt Studio
Building a chart	Described in text. Making one needs a software trial and an account.	Build and edit on the page. No account.
Starting a plan	Start from a blank WBS.	Generate a plan from a goal and a deadline, or paste a task list.
Dependencies	Four link types explained.	Type predecessors with lags, see arrows, and get blocked if you create a loop.
Critical path	Explained.	Calculated live, drawn in red, with float per task.
Baseline	Explained.	One click to freeze, then ghost bars and slip against plan.
Fast-track and crash	Explained in prose.	What-if sliders show the new finish date before you commit.
Status	Percent complete explained.	Set percent per task, see a today line and a list of late tasks.
Risk	Not covered.	Risk register with a probability and impact matrix, owners, responses and links to tasks.
Reporting	Not covered.	A status report with green, amber and red ratings, built from the plan. Save it as PDF.
Resources and cost	Explained, but done in desktop software.	Workload by owner and week, per-task budgets, earned value indexes and a forecast.
Governance	Change control explained.	Decision log and change request log with approval status.
Export	Through the desktop product.	Download as CSV, PNG, SVG, PDF or a project file you can re-open. You can also download the whole app as one offline HTML file.

Not built yet

Limit	Detail
Templates	Plan generation uses built-in templates, not a language model, so it does not read long briefs.
Calendar	Durations count calendar days. Weekends and holidays are not skipped.
Resources	Workload counts tasks running at once, not hours, and nothing is leveled automatically. Budgets use one currency.
Sharing	Your plan is saved in this browser only. Download the project file to move it or share it.
Links	Only finish-to-start links are drawn and scheduled.

New project