Meeting canvases · Plan and estimate
Gantt charts and project timelines, built while you talk
A Gantt chart is a project schedule drawn as bars against a calendar: each row is a task, each bar runs from the day it starts to the day it ends, and milestones and links show what has to happen first. It shows at a glance who is doing what and when, and which slip would move the deadline.
Troopa builds one during your planning call on Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. Say “Hi Troopa, put the launch plan on a timeline” and the phases, tasks, owners and dates fill in as people agree them; say “push user research back a week” and everything that follows it moves too.
14 days free, no card. Then $15 per seat, per month. Cancel any time. Last checked against the product on 16 October 2026.
Why project plans fall apart after the planning meeting
- The plan is agreed out loud, then one person spends the afternoon typing it into a spreadsheet from memory.
- Dates said in passing (“launch is the fourteenth”) never make it onto the chart, or arrive wrong.
- Every change means dragging bars by hand, so the chart is out of date by the next status meeting.
- Nobody wrote down what depends on what, so when one task slips nobody sees what it drags with it.
- The chart says how long a task takes but not who is doing it, and stakeholders read it as a promise.
How to plan a Gantt chart in a meeting with Troopa
Step 1: Ask, or say yes
Say “Hi Troopa, draw a Gantt chart for the office move”. When dates and steps start coming up, Troopa offers: “Shall I lay them out on a timeline as you talk?”
Step 2: Plan out loud
Phases, tasks, owners and milestones fill in as they are agreed. A task gets a date only when somebody says one, or asks Troopa for one.
Step 3: Change it by saying it
“Push user research back a week”, “testing takes three weeks”, “give wireframes to Priya”. Whatever follows a task that moves, moves with it.
Step 4: Drag it on the card
Drag a bar to move it, pull its ends to change how long it takes, or type over a task. Zoom out to see the whole plan, or in to see the days.
Step 5: Present, download, keep
Present the chart to the call, then download it as a PDF, a picture, or Excel with a plan sheet and a Gantt sheet. It stays with the meeting’s notes.
A worked example: an app’s launch plan
A consumer app team is planning a launch on a Zoom call in early October. Sam leads the meeting with Troopa open; the others plan out loud.
- Sam“Hi Troopa, open a timeline for the app launch.”
- Priya“User interviews start on the fifth and take a week and a half.”
- Tom“Survey analysis can’t start until the interviews are done. Give it half a week.”
- Lena“The onboarding flow takes two weeks once we have the survey results. The beta test is the week before launch.”
- Sam“And launch is on Thursday the twelfth of November.”
- Priya“Half the interview panel is away that week.”
- Sam“Hi Troopa, push the user interviews back a week.”
- Troopa, on your screen“Moved User interviews a week later, and Survey analysis and Onboarding flow with them.”
How different industries plan with a Gantt chart
Construction and fit-out
The weekly site meeting, where the programme (as UK projects call the schedule) changes most: “the electrics slip a week”, “plastering can’t start until first fix is signed off”. The chart moves while the contractors are still on the call.
Events
A conference run-up with fixed dates that cannot move, venue deposits, speaker deadlines and print dates, and everything else planned backwards from them as milestones.
Agencies and marketing teams
A campaign kick-off with the client: briefs, creative rounds, approvals and media dates. The client sees the timeline presented before the call ends, and gets the Excel file after it.
Healthcare operations
Opening a clinic or moving to a new booking system: recruitment, training, go-live and the weeks of running both systems side by side. Operational planning only, with no patient details on the chart.
Finance teams
The year-end close and the audit timetable: who reconciles what by which day, and the dates the auditors fix, set as milestones the rest of the plan works back from.
Legal teams
A transaction’s closing timeline, or a litigation timetable with court dates as fixed milestones, agreed on the client call and sent round as a chart instead of a paragraph.
A Gantt chart template for your planning meeting
Use it as a table in any spreadsheet, then draw the bars as a stacked bar chart, or let Troopa draw them. Agree the outcome and the fixed dates before you list a single task.
Project: [name] Outcome: [what “done” means] Fixed dates: [launch, holidays, approvals] ID | Phase | Task | Owner | Start | End | After | Milestone | Done 1 | Research | User interviews | Priya | 13 Oct | 22 Oct | | | 0% 2 | Research | Survey analysis | Tom | 23 Oct | 25 Oct | 1 | | 0% 3 | Build | Onboarding flow | Lena | 27 Oct | 7 Nov | 2 | | 0% 4 | Build | Beta test | Priya | 6 Nov | 13 Nov | 3 | | 0% 5 | Launch | Launch | Sam | 14 Nov | 14 Nov | 4 | Yes | Across the top: the weeks (or days, or months). A bar for each task from Start to End; a diamond for each milestone. An arrow from each task to the ones that come After it.
Questions to settle in the planning meeting
- What has to be true by the deadline, and which dates cannot move?
- What are the big phases, and what can only start once something else is finished?
- Who owns each task? One name each, not a team.
- Where is the risk, and where do we need slack: holidays, reviews, approvals?
- Break any bar longer than a couple of weeks into smaller tasks, so a slip shows early.
- Keep the chart at the level the people reading it need, and let each owner keep the detail of their own tasks.
Questions about Gantt charts
What is a Gantt chart used for?
A Gantt chart is used to plan and follow a project over time: which tasks happen when, who does each one, what has to finish before something else can start, and where the milestones fall. It is most useful when dates matter and tasks depend on each other, as in launches, events and building work.
Can you make a Gantt chart in Excel?
Yes, though Excel has no Gantt chart type of its own: the usual way is a stacked bar chart with the start dates hidden. Troopa’s Excel download comes ready made, with a plan sheet, a row a task, and a Gantt sheet with each task’s days filled in.Microsoft Support, Present your data in a Gantt chart in Excel →
What are the main parts of a Gantt chart?
A list of tasks down the side, a calendar across the top, a bar for each task from its start to its end, diamonds for milestones, and lines from a task to the ones that wait for it. Many charts add who owns each task, how far through it is, and a line for today.
What is the difference between a Gantt chart and a kanban board?
A Gantt chart is about time: when each task happens and what has to come first. A kanban board is about flow: which column each task is in, such as to do, in progress and done, with no dates needed. Teams often use a Gantt chart for the plan and a kanban board for the week’s work.
Who invented the Gantt chart?
The chart is named after Henry Gantt, an American engineer who used charts of work against time in factories around 1910. Bar charts of time are older, and Karol Adamiecki drew a similar chart in 1896; the name “Gantt chart” itself took hold after Wallace Clark’s book of 1922.Patrick Weaver, Henry L Gantt, 1861 to 1919: a retrospective view of his work →
Can AI draw a Gantt chart from a planning meeting?
Yes. Troopa is an AI Gantt chart maker that works from the planning conversation itself, on a call on Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet, with each task’s dates, owner and what it follows as people agree them. It dates a task only when somebody says a day or asks it for one, so a task with no day stays undated until then.
Sources
- Association for Project Management, Gantt chart
- Microsoft Support, Present your data in a Gantt chart in Excel
- Patrick Weaver, Henry L Gantt, 1861 to 1919: a retrospective view of his work
Read on 15 October 2026, by the people who make Troopa.
Try it in your next meeting
Install Troopa on your Mac, Windows PC or Ubuntu computer, join your call on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet as you always do, and ask: “Hi Troopa, open a timeline for the app launch.”
14 days free, no card. Then $15 per seat, per month. Cancel any time.