Whether you’re in the first steps of launching a startup or you want to expand your existing business, a well-thought-out business plan is important. In fact, simply writing a business plan can increase your chances of success by more than 15%. Creating a Gantt chart for business plan purposes makes it easier for you to visualize the steps required to turn your idea into a reality.
In this article, we’ll look at what a Gantt chart is and how you can use it to plan for your business. We’ll also provide some tips for using monday.com as a business planning and management tool and highlight some templates you can use right away to bring everything and everyone together for increased success.
What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that provides a visual representation of tasks across planned time periods.
Gantt chart tools are traditionally used to help team members manage project schedules, but you can customize them to help manage any series of tasks you need to accomplish over a set period of time.
Can you use a Gantt chart for business planning?
, You can use a Gantt chart for business planning purposes, whether you’re working on project plans for an existing business or want a way to better manage tasks when launching a startup. Here are some ways you can use Gantt chart software for business planning:
- Create an action plan for a business launch: Gantt chart templates let you turn the narrative format of an actual business plan into a visual action plan, with start and end dates, milestones, and dependencies that help you know what you need to do first to start working on your business dream.
- Plan for a specific business-related project: At any phase of your business, you can create simple Gantt charts to manage project tasks that help you work toward success. For example, you might want to open a new location. Customize your Gantt charts to lay out the task list for getting that done, so you can stay organized along the way.
- Create a work breakdown structure for a specific department: Established businesses can use project management tools like Gantt charts to manage time-dependent efforts for specific departments. For example, your marketing department may need to scale up their efforts during the holiday season.
You can use a project Gantt chart for a variety of business plan and management purposes, but should you? Digging into the benefits of Gantt charts for business planning can help you make a good choice for your situation.
Benefits of a Gantt chart for business planning
Some benefits of a Gantt chart for business planning include:
- Ability to view the big picture: When you can visualize the overall picture of your business plan, you can avoid getting bogged down in the details. You can also make proactive decisions that are best for your business goals.
- Better task tracking: Gantt charts help you keep track of tasks in real-time, ensuring you or your team can work through the right assignments quickly.
- Full transparency of dependencies: Gantt charts make it easy to indicate and understand which tasks are dependent on others — i.e. if you have to complete one task before moving to another. It also helps you understand when teams can tackle tasks simultaneously, so they can get more done.
- Increased insight for delegation: If you see tasks that can run simultaneously, you know you can’t do both yourself. This can be a clue that it’s time to delegate some work to others.
- Creation of realistic timelines: Gantt charts force you to apply start and end dates to the entire project or effort, as well as all tasks that are part of it. Forcing you to think about how long each task might take helps ensure you understand how long the overall process might take.
monday.com’s robust Work OS includes a designated Gantt View — as one of 8+ views —, Gantt chart templates, and plenty of other project management functions for business planning.
Gantt charts and other features for business planning on monday.com
Whether you’re collaborating on a business plan document with others, are ready to market your business idea on social media, or want to integrate other software to manage business processes, monday.com can help. Here are some monday.com features you might use for business planning and management:
- monday workdocs: Draft and co-edit documents in real-time, and discuss changes via comments with team members.
- Automations: Save time and avoid unnecessary meetings with custom workflow automations that help drive seamless handoffs and ensure tasks never get lost in the shuffle.
- Files Column: Keep all your files in one location to make it easy for teams to reference policies, brainstorming notes, and other information as they implement a business plan.
- Integrations: Seamlessly integrate your favorite tools withmonday.com —Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Google, Excel, and Zoom are just a few of the many available options.
We’ve also got plenty of curated templates to help you specifically work on business plans and get started faster
Related templates
Besides a Gantt chart example for projects, here are just a few free templates available exclusively on monday.com that can help you plan and manage business efforts more efficiently.
- Simple Business Plan Template: Start with our Simple Business Plan Template if you’re working with a team to launch a new startup or service line. Collaborate with others easily on one intuitive and customizable board as you define vision and goals, customer needs, market size and scope, and everything in between for business success.
- One-Page Business Plan Template: Quickly collaborate or capture your own ideas on our One-Page Business Plan Template. This simple template is customizable, and you can use it to document plans for each business idea and then ask for feedback or compare your options before choosing one to act on.
Still not sure if a Gantt chart is right for your business planning needs? We’ve got a couple of FAQ answers that might help.
FAQs about Gantt charts
What three things are included in a Gantt chart?
Gantt charts are made of a variety of elements, but the three main items you’ll find on any Gantt chart are:
- The overall timeline, which shows when a project or effort starts and ends
- Tasks, which show up on the horizontal bars of the chart
- Dependencies, which indicate which tasks are required before other tasks can begin
How do you create a Gantt chart in Excel?
You can download a Gantt chart template from Microsoft that helps you create a Gantt chart in Excel. You can also set up your own when you create a project by creating a horizontal axis that acts as a dated timeline and including color-coded tasks in cells on each row.
What makes a good Gantt chart?
A good Gantt chart requires planning project management, tasks, or efforts that can be tracked over time. The time period should be short enough that you can successfully capture it in a visual, and the project should have enough tasks to track to support the effort of making a Gantt chart to begin with.
Powerup your business plans with monday.com
Whether you want to collaborate on a Gantt chart for a business plan or automate activities to ensure the right people get things done, monday.com’s powerful Work OS can help.
Get started today with drag-and-drop capabilities that make it super easy to build a business plan, Gantt chart, and many other process tools. Then communicate in real-time over the life of your project or effort to ensure seamless collaboration and success.
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