Gantt Chart Examples

A Gantt chart lists a project's tasks down the left and draws each one as a bar along a date axis, so you can see what happens when, what overlaps and what has to finish first. Below are six examples for different kinds of projects. Each one comes with its task list and dates, so you can copy the plan and change it to fit your own.

Website launch

A small plan with one row per phase. Build and Testing overlap by a week, which a Gantt chart shows at a glance and a task list hides. The launch is a milestone: a single date rather than a stretch of work, drawn as a diamond.

Task	Start	End
Research	Mar 2, 2026	Mar 13, 2026
Design	Mar 16, 2026	Apr 3, 2026
Build	Apr 6, 2026	May 15, 2026
Testing	May 11, 2026	May 22, 2026
Launch	May 26, 2026	Milestone

This is the plan our guides to making a Gantt chart in Excel, in Google Sheets, in PowerPoint and in Word build step by step.

Kitchen remodel

Construction schedules are where Gantt charts earn their keep, because most of the work has to happen in order. Here the cabinets are ordered during planning, since they take six weeks to arrive, and each trade starts when the one before it finishes.

Planning Construction

Task	Start	End
Design and measurements	Jan 4, 2027	Jan 22, 2027
Permits	Jan 25, 2027	Feb 12, 2027
Order cabinets and appliances	Jan 25, 2027	Mar 5, 2027
Demolition	Mar 8, 2027	Mar 12, 2027
Plumbing and electrical	Mar 15, 2027	Mar 26, 2027
Drywall and paint	Mar 29, 2027	Apr 9, 2027
Cabinets and countertops	Apr 12, 2027	Apr 23, 2027
Flooring and fixtures	Apr 26, 2027	May 5, 2027
Final inspection	May 7, 2027	Milestone

The long cabinet order is the bar to watch. It has five weeks of slack before the cabinets go in, but a delay longer than that pushes back the install and everything after it. For more on this kind of plan, see our guide to construction timelines.

Product launch

Two teams, one date. Coloring the bars by team shows who is busy when, and the launch day milestone shows which work has to be finished before it and which carries on after.

Product Marketing

Task	Start	End
Beta program	Feb 1, 2027	Mar 12, 2027
Pricing and packaging	Feb 15, 2027	Mar 5, 2027
Launch page and copy	Mar 1, 2027	Mar 26, 2027
Press outreach	Mar 15, 2027	Apr 9, 2027
Email campaign	Mar 29, 2027	Apr 16, 2027
Launch day	Apr 13, 2027	Milestone
Post-launch review	Apr 19, 2027	Apr 30, 2027

The email campaign runs past launch day on purpose: the announcement goes out on the day and the follow-ups after it.

Conference planning

An event plan runs backward from a date that cannot move. Over nine months the bars are long and overlap heavily, so the chart is less about sequence and more about how many things are in flight at once.

Task	Start	End
Set budget and goals	Jan 4, 2027	Jan 29, 2027
Book venue	Feb 1, 2027	Mar 12, 2027
Confirm speakers	Mar 1, 2027	May 28, 2027
Sponsorship sales	Mar 15, 2027	Jul 30, 2027
Promotion	May 17, 2027	Sep 3, 2027
Registration open	Jun 1, 2027	Sep 10, 2027
Catering and AV	Jul 5, 2027	Aug 27, 2027
Conference	Sep 14, 2027	Sep 16, 2027

July is the crunch, with four tasks in flight at once. Our guide to event planning timelines covers how to work backward from the event date.

Thesis or research project

A year-long plan for one person. Several stages overlap, because in practice you begin analyzing while data is still coming in and begin writing before the analysis is done.

Task	Start	End
Literature review	Jan 11, 2027	Mar 26, 2027
Proposal and ethics approval	Mar 1, 2027	Apr 30, 2027
Data collection	May 3, 2027	Jul 30, 2027
Analysis	Jul 5, 2027	Sep 24, 2027
Writing	Sep 6, 2027	Nov 19, 2027
Revisions	Nov 22, 2027	Dec 10, 2027
Submission	Dec 15, 2027	Milestone

Data collection cannot start until approval comes through, which makes the proposal the task most likely to delay the rest. See our guides to research project timelines and PhD timelines for more detail.

Software release

Three two-week sprints, with documentation and testing starting during the last one. The two milestones mark the dates people outside the team care about: when the beta goes out and when the release ships.

Planning Development Release

Task	Start	End
Requirements	Mar 1, 2027	Mar 12, 2027
Sprint 1	Mar 15, 2027	Mar 26, 2027
Sprint 2	Mar 29, 2027	Apr 9, 2027
Sprint 3	Apr 12, 2027	Apr 23, 2027
Documentation	Apr 12, 2027	May 7, 2027
QA and bug fixes	Apr 19, 2027	May 7, 2027
Beta release	Apr 26, 2027	Milestone
Release	May 11, 2027	Milestone

Our guide to software project timelines goes deeper on planning a release.

What these examples have in common

• One row per task. Each task has a name, a start date and an end date. Five to ten rows is plenty for a chart you intend to show someone; a longer plan reads better split by phase or team.
• A shared date axis. Every bar sits on the same axis, which is what lets you compare tasks at a glance.
• Milestones. A launch, an inspection or a submission is a single date, not a stretch of work, so it gets a marker instead of a bar.
• Groups. Coloring the bars by phase or team, as the kitchen remodel, product launch and software release do, shows who is busy when.
• Dependencies. When one task can't start until another ends, linking the two means a delay to the first moves the second with it.

Make your own Gantt chart

New to planning one? See what is a Gantt chart for the parts these examples share, and our guide to how to make a Gantt chart for the steps that come before any tool. You can build any of these in a spreadsheet with a stacked bar chart, and the guides linked under the website launch example show how. It works, but every bar is placed by a formula you maintain.

In Preceden you type the tasks and their dates, and it draws the chart. Create a timeline with the Gantt Chart template, then add each task from the example you want to start from. Group tasks into layers to color them by phase or team, make a task start when another one ends, shade a bar by its percent complete, and mark key dates as milestones. Our guide to creating Gantt charts covers each of these.

You can also have Preceden draft the plan for you. Type a project with the word Gantt in it, such as "Gantt chart for a kitchen remodel", into the generator on our [homepage](/), then edit the tasks and dates it suggests.

Every example on this page has 10 tasks or fewer, so each one fits on our free plan, which allows up to 10 events per timeline. Preceden is built for communicating a schedule rather than running the work, so you can't assign tasks to people or calculate a critical path in it.

Not sure whether your project needs a Gantt chart at all? See Gantt chart vs timeline for how to choose.