---
name: Gantt Planning
description: Sequence work and find the critical path.
---
# Gantt Planning

A Gantt chart visualizes tasks, durations, and dependencies on a timeline. Its real value isn't the bars — it's surfacing the **critical path**: the longest chain of dependent tasks that sets the project's minimum duration.

## Method
- **List tasks with estimates.** Bottom-up; each task needs a duration estimate.
- **Map dependencies.** Which can't start until another finishes? Sequential vs parallel.
- **Find the critical path.** The chain whose slip delays the whole project. These tasks get the most scrutiny; everything else has float.
- **Level resources.** Two tasks can't both use your only specialist — sequence them.

## Use honestly
- The plan is wrong the day it's made. Update it as you learn; a stale Gantt is fiction.
- Defend the critical path. Resources flow there first.