worked examples

Five Gantt chart examples

Five example plans — a website launch, a product launch, an app MVP, a house move, and a meetup — each with the one-sentence prompt that generates it, and a note on why the plan is shaped the way it is.

Want a reusable scaffold instead? Copy one of six Gantt chart templates. New to the vocabulary? There's a plain-English glossary. Determined to do it in a spreadsheet? Here's the Google Sheets guide.

example 01 — 6 weeks

Website launch

Launch the bakery website in six weeks: design, build, taste-testing photos, then go live.

week 1 → week 6 milestone

Design

Build

Copy

Photos

QA & fixes

Go live

Build starts one week into Design rather than after it — overlapping the two with lead time saves a week without changing any single task. The half-week gap between “QA & fixes” and go-live is deliberate buffer: the plan absorbs a slip instead of moving launch day.

example 02 — 8 weeks

Product launch campaign

Plan an eight-week launch campaign: positioning, landing page, content, press outreach, launch day.

week 1 → week 8 milestone

Positioning

Landing page

Content

Press list

Outreach

Launch

Everything hangs off Positioning — a classic finish-to-start dependency, because writing pages before the story is settled can lead to rework. Landing page and Content then run in parallel; Outreach is the chain that determines launch day, which makes it the critical path.

example 03 — 10 weeks

Mobile app MVP

Build and ship an MVP of the reading app in ten weeks, with two weeks of beta before the store release.

week 1 → week 10 milestone

Scope cut

Core feature

Onboarding

Beta

Store prep

Release

Set aside time to agree on the MVP scope before building. The “Scope cut” task has a one-week duration to reduce scope creep later. The plan also reserves two weeks for beta testing with users, while store preparation runs in parallel.

example 04 — 4 weeks

Apartment move

Move apartments in four weeks: give notice, book movers, pack, move day, then hand back the keys.

week 1 → week 4 milestone

Give notice

Book movers

Declutter

Pack

Utilities

Move day

Proof that Gantt charts aren’t just for work. “Give notice” is half a week of effort but it gates everything — the clearest possible dependency. Packing can’t start until the decluttering is done (nobody wants to move boxes they meant to throw away), and Utilities has plenty of slack: it can slide a week without touching move day.

example 05 — 8 weeks

Community meetup

Host a 50-person meetup in eight weeks: venue, speakers, tickets, promotion, and the event itself.

week 1 → week 8 milestone

Venue

Speakers

Tickets

Promotion

Logistics

Event day

Work backwards from the event date, the fixed milestone. In this example, ticket sales begin in week 4, after the venue and at least one speaker are confirmed. Promotion continues until the event. The planned deliverable is a meetup for fifty people.

Not sure a timeline is even the right shape? Start with Gantt chart, kanban board, or to-do list?

common questions

About these examples

What should a Gantt chart include?

Include the tasks and their estimated durations, dependencies between tasks, key milestones, and a buffer before fixed dates. These details help readers understand the schedule and how delays might affect it.

How many tasks should a Gantt chart have?

For a summary chart, start with five to ten bars and use task names the team recognizes. A single “Design” bar can cover several tickets. Include more detail when the schedule discussion needs it.

When is a Gantt chart the wrong tool?

When the work has no meaningful order — a queue of independent fixes wants a kanban board or a to-do list instead. A Gantt chart earns its keep exactly when tasks depend on each other and someone is asking “when will it be done?”

How do I make charts like these?

Each example above starts from the one-sentence prompt shown with it. Paste a sentence like that into ganttchart.ai and you get an editable, shareable chart in seconds — then drag the bars until the plan matches reality.

Create a chart for your project

Every chart on this page started as a sentence like the ones above. Type yours and watch the bars appear.

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