Gantt Chart Template

What is a Gantt Chart?

A Gantt chart shows a project as a set of horizontal bars: tasks down the side, weeks across the top, and a bar for each task running from the week it starts to the week it ends. On one page you can see what happens when, which tasks overlap, who owns each one and when the project should finish. Without one, a project lives in a list of deadlines, and a delay in one task can quietly push back everything after it. Fill in the Gantt chart template on this page to print a weekly chart.

Project managers use Gantt charts to plan work and to show progress to sponsors and clients. They are common for building and renovation work, events, product launches, marketing campaigns, software releases, office moves and research projects, and students use them to plan a thesis or a group project. Some grant applications ask for a work plan laid out the same way. The chart is named after Henry Gantt, an American engineer who popularized it in the early 1900s, and the idea has changed little since: a list of tasks, a time scale and a bar for each task.

There is no single standard layout, but the people you report to may set one. A construction or services contract can require a schedule in a particular form, with set update dates, so check the contract’s scheduling clause. A funder may want a timeline or work plan in a set format, and the funding announcement or application guidelines will say so. For a thesis or dissertation, ask your supervisor or department what they expect, and inside a company, check whether a project management office has its own template and reporting cycle.

This is a printable planning chart, not scheduling software. It works in whole weeks, so it will not show tasks measured in days or hours. It does not draw links between dependent tasks, calculate a critical path, track costs or update itself when a date moves; you change the plan and print it again. It is also not a timeline, which marks only milestone dates. For a large project with many linked tasks, use scheduling software and keep this chart as a one-page summary.

What to put in a Gantt Chart

These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.

How to make a Gantt chart

1. Name the project and pick week 1

   Enter the project’s name, which prints in the title, and the date week 1 starts, usually a Monday. The chart labels its columns W1, W2, W3 and so on, and prints ‘Week 1 starts on’ with the date under the title, so anyone reading it can count across to a calendar date. Choose the week the first task begins, not the week you happen to be writing the plan.

2. Break the project into tasks

   List the work as tasks that each produce something you can point to: ‘Sign the lease’, ‘Order furniture’, ‘Set up phones’. Keep each one large enough to last at least a week, since the chart counts in weeks, and small enough for one person to own. Put the tasks in the order they start, so the bars step down the page from left to right and the sequence is easy to follow.

3. Set each task’s start week and length

   For each task, enter a line: task | owner | start week | number of weeks. Work out which tasks depend on others, since furniture cannot be delivered before the lease is signed, and start each task after the ones it depends on are finished. Tasks that do not depend on each other can run side by side. The form fills in each bar from its start week for the number of weeks given.

4. Give every task one owner

   Put one name against each task: the person who answers for it, even if others help. Then read down each week’s column. If the same name has three or four bars running at once, either the dates or the workload is unrealistic, and it is easier to move a bar now than to explain a missed deadline later. A team name is fine for shared tasks, such as moving day.

5. Choose the length, print and update

   Choose 8, 10, 12 or 16 weeks, so that the last task finishes inside the chart with a week or two to spare; bars that run past the last column are cut off. Print the chart, mark progress by hand as tasks finish, and fill in the form again when the plan changes. Keep the earlier version, because comparing the two shows exactly what slipped and by how much.

Gantt chart example

A 10-week plan for a holiday marketing campaign: the lines typed into the form, then the chart they produce, with ■ marking each week a task is under way.

Common mistakes

• Starting a task before the task it depends on has finished, so the chart promises an end date that the work itself cannot meet.
• Giving one person several overlapping bars that add up to more work than they can do in those weeks, so all of those tasks slip at once.
• Choosing too few weeks for the chart, so tasks that run past the last column are cut off and the real finish date disappears from the page.
• Breaking the work into tasks that are too broad, such as ‘Build the website’, which hides where the time actually goes and makes progress impossible to judge.
• Printing the chart once at the start and never updating it, so the plan on the wall no longer matches the project and people stop looking at it.

Frequently asked questions

This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.

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