Gantt Chart Maker

How to Use the Gantt Chart Maker

1. 1. List your tasks. One per line, columns separated by commas, tabs or semicolons. A header row is optional — the tool recognizes one because its start column is not a date. To start from a spreadsheet, choose Import CSV.
2. 2. Give each task its dates. The start is a date such as 2027-03-15. The third column is either the last day, which the task includes, or a duration: 10d for ten days, 3w for three weeks. A duration of 0 makes a milestone — a diamond on the date, such as a deadline or an approval.
3. 3. Add phases, progress and dependencies. Tasks with the same group are drawn under one heading with a summary bar. Progress fills that share of the bar. Depends on takes task numbers — 1 is the first task — or a task's name, and draws an arrow from the end of one task to the start of the next.
4. 4. Pick the scale. Days suit a plan of a few weeks, weeks a semester, months a year or more. Weekends can be shaded, and durations can count working days only.
5. 5. Export. Download the chart as SVG or PNG for a proposal, or Export CSV to keep the plan, edit it in a spreadsheet and import it again later.

The Columns, One by One

Durations, Dependencies and the Today Line

End dates are inclusive, as in every planning tool: a task from Monday to Friday lasts five days. In the example plan, the literature review starts on Monday, January 11, 2027 and lasts four weeks, so it runs to Sunday, February 7; the research proposal, which depends on it, starts the next day. Tick Count durations in working days and durations skip Saturdays and Sundays: the same four weeks end on Friday, February 5, and a five-day task that starts on a Thursday ends on the following Wednesday. With that box ticked, a task that starts on a weekend moves to the Monday after.

Every dependency is finish-to-start: the later task should begin no earlier than the day after the earlier one ends. When a task starts too soon, the arrow is drawn dashed in orange-red and a note under the task box names both tasks; the tool also reports references to tasks that do not exist and chains of tasks that wait on one another in a circle. Once the page has loaded, a dashed line marks today's date, if it falls within the chart — it is worked out in your browser, so it is always your own date.

Planning a Thesis or Research Project

• Work back from the deadline. Put the submission date in first as a milestone, then the supervisor's reading time before it, then the writing, and see where the start has to be.
• Plan for the waiting. Ethics approval, data access and interlibrary loans take weeks in which other work can go on; give them their own bars so the overlap is visible.
• Mark the decision points. Milestones such as proposal approved or draft to supervisor are the dates your supervisor will ask about. A plan with none has no checkpoints.
• Leave slack. Writing and revision take longer than planned, almost always. A week or two of buffer before the deadline is part of the plan, not a failure of it.
• Update it. Raise the progress figures every week or two and export the CSV; a plan that is never revisited stops describing the project.

A Gantt chart shows when things happen and what waits for what. It does not show how much work a task is, how sure the dates are, or who is overloaded, and past about forty tasks it becomes hard to read — a project that large belongs in project-management software. In a research proposal, present the chart as a figure: with APA style figure on, the figure number and title go above the image and a note below can give the start date or the assumptions behind the durations.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make a Gantt chart for my dissertation?

List the stages — reading, proposal, approvals, data collection, analysis, writing, revisions — with a start date and a duration for each, and group them into phases such as Planning, Research and Writing. Add the deadlines as milestones with a duration of 0, link each stage to the one it waits for, and choose the week scale for a project of a few months.

What is a milestone in a Gantt chart?

A milestone is a point in time rather than a stretch of work: a deadline, an approval, a submission. It has no duration, so it is drawn as a diamond on its date instead of a bar. In this tool, give a task a duration of 0 to make it a milestone.

What does a dependency arrow mean?

It means the task at the arrow's head cannot start until the task at its tail is finished — a finish-to-start dependency, the most common kind. The arrow runs from the end of one bar to the start of the next. If the later task is scheduled to start too early, the arrow turns dashed and orange-red.

Is the end date included in the task?

Yes. A task from March 1 to March 5 covers five days, March 5 included, which is how planning tools and most people read a date range. If you give a duration instead, 5d from March 1 also ends on March 5.

Can I open the chart in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes. Export CSV saves the tasks with ISO dates, inclusive end dates, groups, progress and dependency numbers, which any spreadsheet opens. Edit them there and use Import CSV to load the file back in; the columns are read in the same order.

Why don't I see the today line?

The today line appears only when today's date falls between the chart's first and last days. It is worked out by your browser after the page loads, so it is missing while the page is still loading and in a downloaded file only if today was on the chart when you saved it.