5 Gantt chart examples for project management

Essential building blocks for every Gantt chart

Gantt charts work because they show more than just the tasks you have on your plate; they explain how the tasks connect, overlap, and form the critical path that takes your work from ideation to completion. 

For example, while project timeline flowcharts might give you a list of tasks due on chronological dates, the essential elements of a Gantt chart include: 

• Task bars: These horizontal bars are an upgrade from simple checkboxes because they visualize the duration of a task, including specific start dates and deadlines. Task bars can also be color coded to show task ownership, so you can pick up information from the chart at a glance. 
• Task dependencies: Project tasks are dependent when one needs to be completed before work on the next can begin. Gantt charts use lines or arrows to represent dependencies. They show the order of the tasks that need to be signed off and the points on the timeline where a delay could have a knock-on effect.
• Milestones: Usually represented by diamonds, milestones break your work into more manageable project phases. They give you key points to evaluate and adapt your work while the project is still ongoing.
• The date line: The task bars on a Gantt chart are read against a horizontal calendar. When you work with Gantt chart software, your diagram should include a vertical date line, which moves forward every day to help you see how much time you have left. 

Because they put all this crucial information at your fingertips, Gantt charts can help you make informed, proactive decisions to keep your project work on track. 

To see this in action, take a look at this Gantt chart example, which was used to support a team during a relocation project.For this project, the taskbars vary considerably in length. There are short tasks — like a call to coordinate logistics — that are shown as single days of work. In contrast, tasks like collecting documentation might involve calls to an external agency and then processing time before the papers are sent. These tasks are represented by longer bars, which ensures the wait time is accounted for in the project roadmap. 

The tasks are color coded to show the moment when the logistics team takes over. While the initial functions (shown in blue) can be completed from the company’s main office, the switch to purple shows the tasks that need to happen once the physical relocation is in motion. 

Because the project is fundamentally manual, every task is dependent. The materials have to reach each new location before the next stage can begin. This means the critical path is clearly represented by arrows throughout this Gantt chart. 

Finally, the milestone diamonds represent the most important hurdles, where the entire project would stop if the conditions weren’t met. In this case, the milestones are the permissions and customs clearance the company needs to transport the materials for the relocation. 

This example shows how informative Gantt charts can be. They don’t just show the tasks that need to be completed; they show the way you expect to tackle them and set out a clear plan for meeting even the most complex project goals.

5 Gantt chart examples for everyday use cases

When you want to bring the transparency and flexibility of Gantt charts to your project work, there are plenty of tools on offer. You can create a simple Gantt chart by using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets, try out a free Gantt chart template, or even use a graphic design app to create an illustration for your project plan. 

All of the examples on this list were created with Wrike’s Gantt chart and project management software. For each example, we’ll explain why this way of visualizing your timeline is so effective.

1. Project management Gantt chart example

Gantt charts are so widely used for project management because they create a shared point of reference that’s easy to read and update as your work progresses. 

Even with complex projects where multiple subteams contribute, Gantt charts can help. 

• Show who’s responsible for each task, either through color coding or labeling the task with the name of the project team member it’s assigned to.
• Display tasks that happen simultaneously without having to compare separate screens, calendars, or task lists.
• Clarify expectations and responsibilities by showing the expected end dates for each task — and the milestones at stake if the work isn’t delivered on time.

2. Business plan Gantt chart example 

Complex documents like business plans and project proposals often need a framework to keep the writing on track. Gantt charts can help you bring these documents together. 

• Clarify the end dates from the very beginning of the project, which helps build a sense of accountability and focus.
• Prioritize the different sections of the business plan in turn, so you can allot time evenly and make sure none of the essential information is overlooked.
• Show the subtasks involved for each section. For example, suppose your business plan includes a construction project. In that case, you might have to research costs, gather quotes, and look for grant opportunities before finalizing the budget for your business plan. A Gantt chart lets you list those subtasks and even make a milestone dependent on them so you can submit a more detailed, convincing proposal in the time you have available.

3. Product launch Gantt chart example

Bringing a new product to market is a long process with exhaustive planning before the launch and in-depth evaluation in the months that follow. With a Gantt chart, you can guide your team through all the essential tasks.

• Separate your work into clear phases. Product launches tend to be divided into pre-launch, launch, and post-launch stages. A Gantt chart’s milestones and timeline structure make it simple to show the tasks in each phase. In the example above, all the tasks are associated with the pre-launch phase, which ends when the launch event has been fully planned. 
• Show potential bottlenecks in advance. When you can clearly see how many tasks fall at the beginning or end of a phase, it’s easier to spot potential delays. With this information, you can adjust your due dates or resource allocation before your project gets off track. 
• Create clear accountability to help you collect everything you need for your product launch in good time. For example, by creating a shared milestone for your product development and management team or your marketing campaign manager and social media team, you can clearly define who has responsibility for each asset, so all the materials you need are created smoothly. 

4. Event planning Gantt chart example

Just as with planning a launch, event planning involves many unpredictable tasks and a lot of coordination with professionals outside your organization. Gantt charts help you make sure nothing is overlooked.

• Centralize the individual tasks for the entire project, helping teams move seamlessly from the theoretical planning phase to contact with the attendees and coordination of the event itself. 
• Clarify the decision-making process by showing who is responsible for the decisions behind each milestone and storing that information in one place.
• Inform resource management and ensure no one is working over capacity so the team is still at its best in the days leading up to the event. 

5. Agile Gantt chart example

While teams that manage their projects with Agile techniques might be more familiar with Kanban boards for task tracking, Gantt charts can also be an asset. 

Put simply, the best Gantt charts are designed to be updated. When the project scope changes — as Agile teams expect it to — Gantt charts adjust your plan and help you see what it will take to keep the project on track. 

Agile Gantt charts are: 

• Dynamic. When the complexity or priority of a task changes, Gantt charts make it easy to reschedule the subsequent due dates or reorder the tasks.
• Detailed. Even if your sprint only represents a week of work, Gantt charts can help you visualize dozens of simultaneous tasks. 
• Transparent. When your team shares the Gantt chart to view their remaining tasks, it’s far easier for them to share ideas and solve the challenges collaboratively. 

Plus, when you update the Gantt chart as you complete your tasks, you create a record of how much you achieved during the sprint cycle. This can be a useful visual aid when you hold a retrospective and evaluate your approach.

Build a better Gantt chart with work management software

As the examples above show, the best Gantt charts are adaptable. They’re not graphics you produce at the beginning of a project or a concrete list of stages; they’re dynamic, strategic plans that evolve as your project progresses. 

Some of the Gantt chart tools available can look good on the surface. They might help you color code your work, add information on task ownership, or visualize subtasks alongside the main milestones. 

But unless your Gantt chart software is integrated with your task tracking, you’ll have to update the diagram manually every time the project outlook changes. It’s impossible to effectively prioritize your work when you’re looking at outdated information, it’s easy for essential tasks to fall through the cracks, and you won’t enjoy the full benefits Gantt charts can offer. 

When you use Wrike, we generate a real-time, responsive Gantt chart from the latest data about your team’s work. This simplifies the way you share information about your project progress, making it more intuitive, more flexible, and more transparent for everyone who needs an overview.  

Here’s how it works:

How to make a Gantt chart in Wrike

The Gantt charts you generate with Wrike give you a crystal-clear set of steps to work toward your goals. With a little analysis and a few clicks, you can set your project up for success. 

• Define your project goals. Clearly defining your project scope and the outcomes you want to achieve will make it easier to identify the key tasks and milestones that will make up your Gantt chart. 
• Break down your project into smaller tasks. It can be helpful to look at old project documents to see how you approached similar tasks in the past. This helps you keep the systems that worked well and look more closely at the tasks that went off track. 
• Estimate the task duration and order. This further planning stage helps make your Gantt chart more accurate, avoiding the problems that can come from underestimating (or overestimating) the time and resources you’ll need. 
• Create a list of tasks. In Wrike, you can set up template tasks or even custom item types with fixed workflows, start and end dates, attached documents, and task descriptions. When you switch your view to your project Gantt chart, you’ll see your tasks accurately reflected as bars on the chart.
• Identify the dependencies. Once your task bars are displayed chronologically, you can create dependencies with a simple click and drag. With Wrike, you can specify one of four types of task dependencies to plot the most accurate path for your team. 
• Identify the milestones. By this point, you’ll have a fairly detailed overview of the shape of your project. To finish your Gantt chart, break the project into phases by defining key tasks as milestones. It’s as simple as clicking on the three-dot menu for the task and selecting “Convert to milestone.” 

When you’re ready, you can then allocate each task to a team member in Wrike. They’ll get an instant notification, and the task cards can give them all the information they need to begin work. 

Powerful features of the best Gantt chart software 

When you complete your project work in Wrike, your team can have constant access to a clean, well-designed Gantt chart to keep them on track. They’ll also be able to take advantage of even more intelligent Gantt chart features to streamline their project work. 

Gantt charts based on real-time data

Wrike’s Gantt charts are generated from up-to-the-minute data on the status of the tasks they include. 

Whenever you create a new task — or reassign an existing one — your Gantt chart will automatically update to display the latest information. This means your team is always prioritizing their work based on facts, and it saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent manually updating the chart. 

The team at Fitbit deployed Wrike and saved more than 200 hours by tracking work in dynamic timelines.

Now, we can see what’s on everyone’s plates with reporting. And timelines allow us to project and provide transparency on how long it will take. We work faster, update key dates for deliverables much more quickly, and eliminate human error.

Brynne Roberts, Director of Creative Operations

Rescheduling tasks with automated task dependencies

Setting up Gantt chart dependencies in Wrike is as easy as clicking and dragging. Then, once those dependencies are in place, you can reschedule your tasks effortlessly, even in bulk.

 

Whenever a task is delayed, simply drag it to the new end date, and all the dependent due dates will shift to match. Plus, when you reschedule a task, we automatically notify the team members the subsequent tasks are assigned to, so you don’t need to waste any time in tackling the problem at hand. 

 

The team at Gwynnie Bee relies on the dependency view to track progress and keep its launch schedule under control:

The dependency view is extremely important for us to launch our project, so we know which item has become a blocker, which items must happen before another one, and for the task owner to understand how important their task is.

Betty Kang

Easy and efficient sharing with the team

The best Gantt charts give your team a central source of truth about their project timeline and the 360-degree visibility they need to collaborate effectively. 

Sharing the information in your Gantt chart can be as simple as sending a snapshot to your stakeholders to update them on your progress. But for the team completing the tasks, the Gantt chart acts as a starting point to drill down into the granular data about the tasks and access all the information they need. If the data is written in or linked to the task card, they can pull it up in seconds, which helps them do their best work, wherever they are in the world.

The team at Sony Pictures Television credits Wrike with reducing delivery time on creative projects by 40%, even in the switch to remote work. It’s all down to the ease of communication and sharing.

We use the Gantt chart to understand all of our overlapping projects and timelines. It’s really valuable to understand the full scope of work happening against a calendar view … Combining creative teams into a single space where we can share projects and assets gave us great visibility. Now, we can pull together all data from the creative centers around the world to capture metrics, projects, clients, and progress.

Nicki Batelli, Vice President of Operations and Production

Intelligent risk management tools

Wrike’s industry-leading Work Intelligence® solution includes risk management alerts for the tasks you list in your Gantt chart. While the date line on a simple Gantt chart can show you when you’re running out of time, Wrike’s risk management is more proactive. 

By looking at a range of factors — including the history of the task, the people assigned, and the dependencies — we can quickly alert you to the tasks at risk of missing a deadline. This helps you respond even faster to challenges, so you can deliver your projects with less stress. 

The team at Arvig described how these risk management features work for them: 

Having a single source of truth for information and communication makes it easy for leadership to stay in the loop or get a new team member up to speed quickly. It mitigates the risk of tasks falling through the cracks.

Shaun Carlson, Director of R&D and Continuous Innovation

Gantt chart templates and task imports from other platforms to get started. 

When you track your work in Wrike, it’s easy to convert your project data to a Gantt chart. And if you’re just getting started, you can import files from Excel and Microsoft Project to generate your first Gantt chart quickly. 

Wrike also includes prebuilt templates designed for teams that want to work with Gantt charts, including: 

• Project schedule template, which helps you break up and assign your tasks, and then monitor your progress on a project dashboard
• Project risk analysis template, where a Gantt chart helps you gauge, classify, and communicate risks to your project outcome before they affect the quality of your work
• Complex project with phases template to represent the initiation, planning, development, testing, and launch stages of a project

Bring your project roadmap to life with Gantt charts from Wrike

When Henry Gantt first designed his project diagrams, they were used to plan massive engineering and manufacturing projects. Today, this overview is essential to managers across industries. Gantt charts can make or break any project from a game-changing new contract to a repeatable internal project lifecycle. 

Wrike’s project management tools give you everything you need to build a better Gantt chart, either from scratch or with an easy-to-use template. Streamline your project mapping with automated task dependencies and scheduling, intelligent risk management, and effortless sharing to keep everyone on your team in the loop. 

Find out more about how Wrike can change the way you manage projects. Book a demo with the team today.

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