How to Create a Gantt Chart in Notion (With Step-by-step Instructions)

Managing multiple teams means keeping an eye out for delays or anyone falling behind.

If you’re a project manager, you likely deal with this daily, overseeing multiple teams on their project tasks, timelines, and dependencies.

You’ll quickly realize how overwhelming it is to allocate resources without the right tools and strategies. That’s when people turn to tools like Notion to create Gantt charts. Notion gives managers a bird’s-eye view of tasks, helping set timelines and milestones with visual workflows. 

A Notion Gantt chart combines project management and task tracking in one dashboard. It lets you visualize tasks and avoid bottlenecks. With customizable templates and real-time collaboration, it’s worth trying for effective resource management.

In this article, let’s understand how to create a Notion Gantt chart and manage tasks better.

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How to Create a Gantt Chart in Notion

Follow these simple steps on how to create a Gantt chart in Notion:

Step 1: Set up your Notion workspace and create a new page

Organize your Notion workspace to create and manage multiple pages. This helps maintain clarity and focus. 

• Consider keeping a dedicated workspace for managing projects to streamline the process
• Open Notion and navigate to the current pages and workspaces on the left-hand sidebar
• Click on the ‘+’ sign near the Private button. This creates a new blank page, which you can use as a workspace for the Gantt chart
• Give this page a relevant title, such as ‘Practice Gantt Chart on Notion’

• Notion offers multiple templates for these pages. Select the Empty option to start with a blank slate. You can now create a Notion Gantt chart without any pre-existing formats

Step 2: Set up your database and add columns

Next, you’ll need a database with the data points and data types that will populate your Gantt chart. 

• Use your new page to type in ‘/table’ in the content region
• Notion will now release a drop-down menu with three options
• Choose ‘Table View’ under the database tab

Note that the table comes with default columns. You need to customize them to suit your project and assessment needs. A good start would be to click on each column’s header and rename it with a unique tag as required.

Properties in Notion also allow you to improve your database with structure, categorization, and organization. You can now complete its build— 

• Click on the first column’s header and rename it to ‘Task Name’. You can use this column to manually enter the names of each task involved in your project. Make these names descriptive to better understand how your resources are spent on particular tasks
• Hit the ‘+’ icon on the right of your table to add a new column. Select ‘Date’ as the property type from the drop-down menu. Label this column as ‘Start Date’ and use it to specify when each task is scheduled to begin
• Add a column called ‘End Date’. Both these columns let you visualize the duration of tasks
• Add another column again and choose ‘Select’ as its property type. Rename the column as ‘Status’ and continue by defining the different statuses you’d like to add to track each task. Consider options like ‘Yet to Start’, ‘In Progress’, ‘Completed’, and ‘Published’

Step 3: Create the Notion Gantt chart by adding a timeline view

Did you know timelines and Gantt charts are different progress-tracking tools? Although Notion doesn’t natively support Gantt charts, you can cook something similar by adding a timeline view. Here’s how:

• Click on the ‘+’ button under your table name and scroll down to choose ‘Timeline View’. This view visually represents which tasks are taking how much time as per dates

• You’ll also be prompted to name this timeline view. Click on the title box that reads ‘Untitled’ and rename it to ‘Gantt Chart’ to indicate its purpose
• Remember to select the date properties for your project timeline. The ‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ columns are typically enough

Step 4: Input tasks, dates, and statuses

Moving on, add your project’s tasks and subtasks with their respective start and due dates. 

• Use the ‘Task Name’ column to enter the names of all tasks within your project. Your intent here is  precision and  clarity
• Next, start filling in start and end dates to define each task’s timeline and how it appears on the Gantt chart
• Also, update the status column to categorize where each task stands in its development pipeline

Step 5: Customizing your Gantt chart by setting dependencies

You can set dependencies between tasks on Notion to understand the sequence and relationship of project activities. These dependencies indicate which tasks must be completed before others can begin.

• Open the task properties by clicking on the respective task within the timeline view 
• Click on ‘Add a New Property’ and choose ‘Relation’ from the property types
• Keep in mind that the relation must link to the same table, effectively letting you create dependencies within your Gantt chart
• Lastly, in the dependency property, select tasks that must be completed before the current task can start. This offers a visual link between the tasks in the timeline view, helping you manage task sequences

Step 6: Assign Tasks

Assign tasks to specific team members to oversee accountability and make everyone aware of their responsibilities.

Click on the ‘+’ button again, select ‘Person’ as the property, and add a column labeled ‘Assigned To’. You can now add one or multiple team members responsible for each task in this column. Your screen now demonstrates a classic example of a Notion Gantt chart that can be used for project management

Use the comments section in each task to communicate the exact task brief to the respective team members.

Try testing the above 8 steps to create Gantt charts with different properties.

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Limitations of Notion Gantt Charts

Despite the simple process of creating a Notion Gantt chart, it has several limitations.  Let’s explore them here:

Scalability issues make it unsuitable for large projects

While Notion is a powerful tool for managing small to medium-sized projects, it usually struggles with managing larger, more complex projects. As the number of tasks and dependencies increase, Notion Gantt charts may become cluttered and harder to manage.

Although flexible, Notion’s interface isn’t designed to handle the intricate demands of extensive project management.

For instance, visualizing many tasks on a single timeline can be challenging, and performance may degrade with the volume of data.

Dependency management requires manual effort from project managers

Dependency management is crucial when planning projects in a multi-team environment, as it helps to monitor the efforts required and automatically reschedule tasks if they are delayed. Notion Gantt charts lack automatic rescheduling capabilities, making setting up task dependencies harder. 

For example, imagine you have a project timeline of linked dependent parent and sub-tasks. You decide to change the period of the first task, but the second task doesn’t automatically adjust. This means that your dependencies aren’t linked on Notion, which beats the purpose of functional Gantt charts.

To adjust project timelines, you need to manually reschedule all the dependent tasks if the preceding one is delayed. This manual process is time-consuming and prone to errors in the long run, especially in projects with many interdependent tasks.

Notion also fails to provide visual indicators or alerts for dependency conflicts. The project timeline may misalign if you can’t proactively identify these issues.

Lack of in-built reporting makes it difficult to analyze progress

Almost every project management tool has in-built reporting capabilities to help track your team’s progress and plan things better. However, Notion lacks this basic feature. 

Reporting integrations are available on Notion but come with a hefty price tag. Fortunately, Clickup Dashboards help you visualize project data via Velocity charts, burnup charts, burndown charts, and more without charging extra. 

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Create Gantt Charts in ClickUp

When it comes to creating Gantt charts, ClickUp stands out as a superior alternative to Notion because of its large feature set and user-centric design.

While Notion is highly customizable, it falls short in handling complex project management needs. On the other hand, ClickUp addresses these limitations with robust built-in functionality that supports complex projects.

ClickUp Templates

Clickup’s catalog of pre-built templates significantly reduces setup time and establishes a framework for your projects. This saves effort in setting up tables and manually managing coinciding task dependencies. 

Features like automated task management, real-time collaboration, and advanced reporting also help streamline your workflow. 

Download This Template

ClickUp’s Simple Gantt Template automates handling task dependencies and improves your team’s collective productivity. 

It offers a comprehensive overview of your project’s development pipeline, insights into task-specific timelines, task flows, and your team’s performance against deadlines.

ClickUp’s Gantt charts use dynamic components that interact with elements like task lists, calendars, and dashboards.

ClickUp’s Gantt charts promote easy readability of task statuses with multiple color schemes. From automatically converting tasks to milestones and reusing task templates across the Gantt charts, ClickUp has it all.

ClickUp also supports the import of Notion workspaces, so you can upgrade your project management capabilities without losing existing data. Importing Notion’s data to Clickup also allows access to time and goal-tracking features,  integration with third-party tools, and real-time collaboration setups.

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Notion vs ClickUp – Which tool is better for creating Gantt charts?

Here’s a brief comparison table on using Notion vs ClickUp:

Here’s an extended view of how ClickUp assists your teams to finish more work.

ClickUp’s exclusive features for Gantt charts

Unlike Notion, ClickUp’s advanced dependency management allows for automated adjustments when task timelines change, ensuring that all dependent tasks are updated accordingly. This reduces manual effort and the risk of errors. 

ClickUp’s robust scheduling tools, including time blocks and calendar integrations, align your team members on the same schedule. Automated reminders and notifications ensure deadlines are not missed. 

Scalability and versatility in project management software are a given when using ClickUp for Gantt charts. Here are some exclusive ClickUp features. 

ClickUp Time tracking

ClickUp’s Time Tracking feature permits multi-device tracking from any location and offers extensive reports on employee activity. It also lets you sync time-tracking apps into its interface while helping you filter, sort, and label results.

ClickUp Goals

Another feature is ClickUp’s Goals, which lets you set measurable targets and monitor progress with task and project-specific milestones. You can even set monetary and other targets with descriptions and KPIs mentioned.

ClickUp Recurring tasks

Also, ClickUp’s Recurring Tasks feature lets you avoid filling out task briefs repeatedly and automate everyday workplaces to save time.

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Level up your Gantt Charts with ClickUp 

Creating a Notion Gantt chart is extremely simple; what’s hard is managing and building on it. You can leverage Notion as an excellent starting point for setting up and organizing projects.

But as your project management needs grow, ClickUp can accommodate more essential aspects, such as scheduling tasks, managing deadlines, and revealing bottlenecks.

What’s best is that you can use a simple hover action to determine the critical path and dynamically see the project or task’s project percentage. From there, you can prioritize tasks crucial for completing your project.

Are you ready to elevate your project management skills with ClickUp?

Sign up to ClickUp for free.

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