Gantt chart
A Gantt chart puts a project's tasks in rows, each one a bar on a calendar: when it starts, how long it takes and what it waits for.
Select any words here to ask your Maestro about them.
Hire staff starts 3 days late. Train staff has to wait for it to finish. What happens to opening day?
What it's for: seeing a project over time: what happens first, what happens at the same time and when it's done. Each task is a row, and each bar starts on the day its task begins; its length is how long it takes. It's a bar chart lying on a calendar.
How to read it: tasks that overlap happen in parallel. Tasks that follow each other depend on each other: one can't start until the one before it ends. The longest chain of dependent tasks is the critical path: if any of them runs late, the finish date moves. The rest have slack.
It's named after Henry Gantt, who popularized it around 1910.
When what you want to see is how much something changes over time, not when each task happens, see When to use a line chart?.
How it's used
How to make one in Excel
Your table: Task, Start and Duration (days)
- marked: Select the three columns and insert a Stacked Bar chartUnder Insert > Charts > Bar.
- Right-click the Start series > Format Data Series > Fill: No fillThe invisible bar pushes each task out to its start day.
- On the task axis, check Categories in reverse orderThat puts the first task on top.
- If your starts are dates, set the axis minimum to the first dateOtherwise Excel starts the axis in 1900.
When to look closer
A long bar isn't a heavy task
Two bars from your Gantt chart
- marked: Wait for the city permit: 15 days
- marked: Count the inventory: 3 days
Waiting for the permit takes 15 days, and counting the inventory takes 3. Which needs more of your team's hours?
Ask your Maestro about Gantt chart
It answers from the free course page closest to this word, the way it answers while you study.
You: What does "Gantt chart" mean, in plain words?
Your Maestro: I'll explain it with a case of yours: it sticks better than a definition. Which project at work has one task everyone is waiting on?
Asking about: Answers from the page "Which chart should I use? Start with the question"
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Related terms
- Bar chart
A bar chart compares amounts across categories: each bar is a category and its length is the number. Use it to see which branch sold the most.
- Line chart
A line chart joins points in order, almost always over time, to show how a number changes: whether it rises, falls or repeats every season.
- Dashboard
A dashboard puts the few numbers someone checks often to make a decision on one screen, each next to its goal or its trend.
- KPI (key performance indicator)
A KPI is a number a team tracks to know whether it's doing well at what matters most, like monthly sales or orders delivered on time. It only works if it's well defined, so two people who calculate it get the same answer.