Let’s accept this one simple truth – you can have mixed opinions about Gantt charts, but you can’t deny they make tracking project progress easier. But did you know that the use cases of these charts expand to multiple departments and not just project management?
You’d be surprised to know that we’ve got more than a dozen Gantt chart examples that can be applied in real life. Already curious?
Let’s then hop right into the blog without lingering on this intro and making it boring for you.
What Is a Gantt Chart?
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart showing a project’s schedule. It displays the tasks, milestones, and dependencies of the project along a horizontal timeline. Each task is represented by a horizontal bar that shows its start and end dates, duration, and completion percentage.
You can use different colors to show the priority, status, or category of each task. A Gantt chart can be created using various software tools, such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or dedicated project management software like ProProfs Project.
Need a visual understanding? No worries; we have a quick video for you.
Watch: What Is Gantt Chart & Why Is It Important?
15 Diverse Gantt Chart Examples
As we discussed earlier, Gantt charts are more used today than just a real-time progress tracker. After consulting with several project managers, HR heads, and team leads, we could gather an exhaustive list of the most-used fifteen real-life applications or examples of Gantt charts.
Ready to find out? Let’s get started.
1. Project Management
This is by far the most common application of Gantt charts.
In project management, a Gantt chart is essential, especially when you have a lot of tasks and dependencies. It is an excellent way to break down the work into manageable subtasks, assign responsibilities, and track progress.
In the above image, the timeline depicts the primary and crucial project information:
- The project’s name
- Start and end date of the project
- Tasks/subtasks and their duration
- Task dependency
- Workload
The timeline view provides a visual representation of the project, making it easier to plan and allocate resources. The dependencies and milestones help you identify critical path tasks and potential bottlenecks and adjust your schedule accordingly.
Watch: What is Project Management? Learn How to Start Managing Projects Online
2. Human Resource
As a human resource (HR) professional, you understand how there are so many things on your plate, like –
- Assessing current staff requirements
- Employee onboarding
- Recruitment process
- Employee offboarding
- Payroll management
- Managing/updating company policies
- Maintaining employees’ records
- Taking care of employee training and development
Gantt chart templates for HR track candidate interviews, onboarding, training, and more. It can provide an overview of the recruitment process, including the timelines for candidate sourcing, interviewing, and hiring.
For instance, a Gantt chart can display the sequential steps in the hiring process, from posting job ads to conducting interviews and, finally, making offers – making managing multiple candidates more seamless.
3. Business Plan
For budding entrepreneurs, creating a business plan involves numerous moving parts, from market research to financial forecasting.
A Gantt chart can break down the monumental task of launching a business into manageable pieces. It could outline the journey from conceptualization, securing funding, and product development to market entry, helping you track progress against milestones and adjust plans as the business environment changes.
For instance, in the below example of the Gantt Chart, you can see that before researching the market and competitors, you need to define the business vision and perform a SWOT analysis.
Read More: SWOT Analysis | A Way to Boost Project Success Rate
4. Sales Process
Working as a sales representative involves various challenges – cold calling, contacting potential customers, making follow-up calls, delivering sales presentations, sending emails, and conducting video conferences. It’s a demanding job.
Losing track of any of these can derail the entire team. But luckily, with Gantt charts, that won’t happen.
Sales teams can use Gantt charts to map out the sales cycle for key accounts, from initial contact through negotiation, closing, and post-sale follow-up. It helps identify potential bottlenecks, adjust resources, and optimize the sales funnel by monitoring lead conversion rates, sales targets, and other critical KPIs.
Also Read: Project Management KPIs to Track in 2024
5. Marketing
In marketing, Gantt chart examples are not that common. But in reality, it’s invaluable for planning campaigns across different channels.
It can help you coordinate the launch of a new advertising campaign, ensuring that creative development, media buying, and campaign analysis are completed in a timely and synchronized manner.
Gantt charts also let you visualize the overlap between tasks such as content creation, ad buying, and public relations efforts – ensuring that all elements of a campaign are coordinated and executed on time.
Read More: Marketing Project Management: The Ultimate Guide 2024
6. Product Management
For product managers, Gantt charts provide a visual roadmap for product development, from ideation through design, testing, and launch. It details phases such as market research, prototype development, user testing, and production. Such a visual overview of the product development lifecycle helps you easily allocate resources, set milestones, and track progress.
You may also be interested to read this article:
14 Best Product Roadmap Software to Streamline Project Management
7. Media
Media and publishing projects, such as the production of a film, magazine, or digital content series, can be intricately planned with Gantt charts. These charts help schedule and track various stages of content creation, editing, and distribution – ensuring that deadlines are met and content is released as planned.
It’s particularly useful in managing cross-functional teams that include writers, designers, and marketers – providing a common timeline that syncs everyone’s efforts toward the timely completion of media content.
No, we’re definitely not talking about this kind of team effort.
8. Construction
Construction projects are complex, involving numerous subcontractors, regulatory approvals, and material deliveries. Can a Gantt chart help here? You bet it does.
With Gantt charts, you can break down the project into phases such as design, permitting, construction, and inspection – offering a clear timeline for each. You can also highlight dependencies, such as the need to complete the foundation before framing begins.
This level of organization is critical for keeping construction projects on schedule and within budget.
Looking for construction project management software solutions?
Read this article - 10 Best Construction Project Management Software in 2024
9. Social Media
Being part of a social media team is not for the faint-hearted (brutally honest review).
You have to manage posts, create content calendars, track campaign launches, check why engagement rates are falling, and more. But all this chaos can be silenced (to some extent) when you maintain a consistent posting schedule across platforms. How?
Well, social media managers say Gantt charts greatly help them in this.
Using Gantt charts, you can plan posts and campaigns across different platforms, ensuring a strategic approach to content delivery. It also aids in allocating resources for content production and monitoring, optimizing the impact of social media efforts.
10. Event Planning
Event planning is an intricate tale of logistics, from venue booking to vendor coordination and guest management.
A Gantt chart provides event planners with a visual checklist of every task and deadline, ensuring nothing is overlooked. Whether a corporate conference or a charity gala, the chart helps manage the myriad details, guaranteeing a successful event.
For example, in the image given below, you can see that with the help of a Gantt chart, the event is divided into numerous tasks like budgeting, setting dates, and organizing decorations.
11. Consultants
If you are a consultant working on client projects, Gantt charts can help you outline project phases, deliverables, and deadlines – providing a clear roadmap for the client.
This helps communicate the project plan clearly to clients, setting realistic expectations for project completion. It also enables you to juggle multiple client projects efficiently, ensuring each project receives the attention it needs without compromising quality or timelines.
12. Design Project
A Gantt Chart helps track creative processes, review cycles, and implementation stages in creative projects such as website design or branding campaigns. Most tasks in these projects are interdependent.
For instance, if you’re designing a new website, you’ll most likely follow a well-established procedure:
- Create a wireframe for the user interface
- Make a mockup in Photoshop
- Create a webpage
- Test Website
With the help of a Gantt chart, your design team can track all these steps in one place. Here’s an example –
People also read - Web Design Project Management in 2024: The Ultimate Guide
13. Mobile App Development
Statista says – “In 2025, the number of mobile users worldwide is projected to reach 7.49 billion.”
This shows how essential it is to create a mobile app for almost all businesses. Using a Gantt chart, you can plan out all the steps needed to develop your app. It provides a visual representation of the agile development process, including development sprints, feature implementation, testing, and launch.
It also boosts your likelihood of finishing each task accurately and efficiently. After all, the goal is to ensure a successful app launch, and this method helps you achieve that goal.
Suggested read: 6 Reasons to Opt for Agile Methodology for Mobile App Development
14. Email Marketing
Much like social media, email marketing requires robust efforts to plan and execute campaigns efficiently. There’s a lot to track – which content is performing well, which is not, dates, times, contacts, subjects, and more.
The idea to use a Gantt chart here is to remain on top of everything. Otherwise, failing to monitor all email-related tasks and contacts could result in missed sales opportunities and lost valuable connections and leads…something like this –
15. Software Development
Let’s be honest about this: Gantt charts are a dream come true for software development teams. Why?
Well, these charts facilitate the tracking of version releases, feature developments, testing cycles, and bug-fixing efforts – aligning the development team and stakeholders around a common timeline.
Using Gantt Chart in software development projects, you can oversee –
- Project management tasks
- Planning of activities
- Development
- Implementation
- Testing
- Deployment and maintenance
Related read: Agile Software Development Life Cycle (Ultimate Guide 2024)
Practical Benefits of Using Gantt Charts
Now that you have learned about the best Gantt chart examples, you probably want some more clarity on their benefits. Here are some of the best instances of how these charts can benefit your company –
- Improved Visibility & Transparency: Gantt charts break down complex projects into manageable, visual timelines, allowing you to see the progression of tasks and milestones at a glance.
- Communication Booster: By providing a visual representation of the project schedule, Gantt charts serve as a central point of reference for team members, stakeholders, and clients.
- Accountability & Transparency: Gantt charts clearly assign tasks to team members, making it easier to track individual responsibilities and progress.
- Enhanced Planning: These charts allow project managers to plan out the entire project – including setting realistic timelines for each task and milestone.
- Resource Management: By visualizing the timeline and workload, Gantt charts help you identify over-allocations or underutilizations of resources.
- Risk Mitigation: The detailed overview of Gantt charts aids in foreseeing potential risks and dependencies between tasks
- Historical Records for Future Projects: Analyzing past projects can provide valuable insights and learnings, helping teams improve planning and execution for future projects.
Suggested post: 15 Hard-to-Ignore Project Management Benefits
What Are the Parts of a Gantt Chart?
Understanding the key components that make up a Gantt chart can help you utilize them more effectively. Let’s check them out.
- Task List: This is a list of all the tasks or activities that need to be completed for the project.
- Milestones: Key milestones or major project checkpoints are marked on the chart as significant events.
- Dependencies: Arrows or lines are used to show task dependencies, indicating which tasks need to be completed before others can start.
- Timeline: A horizontal timeline represents the project duration, with each task displayed as a bar along the timeline.
Apart from the four main parts of a Gantt chart, there are also some other parts that you should know about –
- Bars: Each task is represented by a bar on the chart, with the length of the bar indicating the duration of the task.
- Duration: The length of each task bar represents the duration of that task, helping to visualize the time required for completion.
- Percent Complete: This indicates the progress or completion percentage of each task, providing an overview of the project’s progress.
- Resources: The Gantt chart can also show the allocation of resources to each task, whether it’s team members, equipment, or materials.
- Critical Path: The critical path is the sequence of tasks that determine the overall project duration. It is often highlighted or identified on the Gantt chart to help with project scheduling.
- Baseline: It refers to the initial plan or schedule against which the progress and deviations are measured. It helps track any changes and their impact on the project timeline.
- Notes or Comments: Gantt charts may include notes or comments section to provide additional information or details about specific tasks or milestones.
- Legend: A legend or key is usually included to explain the symbols or colors used in the chart, making it easier to understand and interpret.
How to Make a Gantt Chart?
Finally, we come down to this question: How do you create a Gantt chart? Well, it’s not that hard to answer it, nor is it to create one. Simply put, there are many ways to create one, but here are the basic steps –
Define Project Goals & Objectives
Before you dive into the Gantt chart itself, clearly outline what your project aims to achieve. Understanding the project’s goals and objectives sets a clear direction and helps identify the key tasks and milestones that will be represented in the Gantt chart.
Choose Your Tool
Next, you need a Gantt chart maker. Most professional project management software like ProProfs Project will likely have one. Keep in mind that different tools offer different features, so choose one that best fits your project’s needs and your team’s familiarity.
Break Down Your Project Into Tasks & Subtasks
This will help you divide your project into manageable and measurable units of work. You can use tools such as a work breakdown structure (WBS), a mind map, or a task list to create these elements.
Estimate the Time & Resources Required for Each Task
Estimate how long each task will take to complete. You can use tools such as historical data, expert judgment, or the three-point estimation technique to estimate these elements.
Identify the Dependencies & Constraints Among the Tasks
Identify which tasks depend on the completion of others before they can begin. Establishing these dependencies early on helps in sequencing tasks logically, ensuring a smooth flow of activities throughout the project lifecycle.
Allocate Resources
Assign resources to each task, indicating who is responsible for what. This could include team members, equipment, or materials needed for task completion. Resource allocation helps manage workloads and avoid bottlenecks.
Monitor & Update
A Gantt Chart is a living document that should evolve with your project. Regularly update the chart to reflect progress, changes in task durations, or shifts in the project schedule. This ensures that the chart remains a reliable tool for project management throughout the project lifecycle.
Want a more elaborate guide?
Read this blog: How to Make a Gantt Chart (Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners)
Create Effective Gantt Charts That Reduce Your Workload
Gantt charts are no doubt an indispensable tool if you are managing projects with multiple tasks, assignees, dependencies, etc. It can really ease your workload if you have the right software with you.
Well, one such popular name is ProProfs Project. It’s an easy-to-use project management software that lets you create Gantt charts pretty easily. It’s a great tool, especially for businesses that are just starting out.
If you choose to give it a test drive, there’s a 15-day free trial. Well, this remains a constant regardless of which software you think of trying.
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