One project's tasks as bars across weeks, with owners, milestones and a line for today.
A Gantt chart puts three things in one picture: when each task happens, who owns it, and what it has to wait for. The sample is a ten-week coffee shop build-out, as it stood halfway through week 5. It's a snapshot: when a date slips, someone has to redraw it.
Who it's for
Whoever runs a project with a fixed end and several people's work in sequence: a build-out, an event, a product launch. You send it to the people doing the work and to the client paying for it, at kickoff and each time something moves.
It suits a plan of 15 to 40 rows. Under ten, a dated list does the job. Past a few dozen, or when tasks change daily, use scheduling software, where dragging one bar shifts everything behind it.
What a good one contains
- Phases, each with a bracket. The sample has four. A client reads the brackets, and the crew reads the rows under them.
- One owner per row. "Kofi" beside drywall settles who to call.
- Dates checked against a calendar. Every bar starts on the weekday it claims. January 18 and February 15 are shaded as holidays, because a plan that books a plumber on a day off loses the crew's trust.
- Diamonds for milestones. Inspections, deliveries and sign-offs take no time, yet everything hinges on them. There are seven here, ending with "Doors open" on Saturday, March 13.
- Arrows for what waits on what. Flooring starts the Monday after drywall ends, and the arrow says that's no coincidence.
- A line for today. Bars to its left are done or under way. Without it, the reader works out the status from dates.
- Where the slack is. A short panel names the plan's two spare days, March 10 and 11. It's the first thing an owner asks when something slips.
- What you need from the client. Paint colors by Monday, February 8. Decisions are tasks too, and the ones most often late.
On a phone, and after week one
Ten weeks of bars won't fit a phone, and a shrunken chart is a gray smudge. On a narrow screen the sample becomes a list: task, owner, weekdays, status and a small bar. Ask for that in your prompt: most of a crew opens the link on site.
When a task slips, don't redraw quietly. Say what changed, why, and what it did to the end date. The sample admits electrical rough-in ran two days late and that nothing after it moved. Then replace the page from the conversation where you made it. The link stays the same, so the crew's chat still points at the current plan.
How to send it
With a password. It gives a client's opening date and says who is on site which week. One password in the crew's group chat is easier than asking five trades to sign in.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
