Notion Gantt Chart: Key Features, Pros and Cons

Notion is work management software that helps teams from across industries such as product development, engineering or marketing to facilitate team communication, manage tasks and create simple project timelines.

While Notion has project management features, is there a Notion Gantt chart? We’ll get to that in a moment. Gantt charts are essential project planning and scheduling tools that can manage and track resources and costs.

What Is Notion?

Notion is software that bills itself as an all-in-one productivity and collaboration tool that’s also used in project management. It’s a versatile tool that allows teams to create customized workflows or organize tasks, projects, notes, documents, databases and more.

While it isn’t specifically designed for project management it can meet various project management needs. For example, it has task management features that allow users to assign tasks, set due dates and track progress.

It also has kanban boards and a calendar view. The latter can be used to schedule and view tasks or project milestones. But its strong suit is users can document meetings, ideas, strategies and project details all in one place, which can help keep track of requirements, decisions and team communication.

Does Notion Have a Gantt Chart?

The big question, of course, is whether the software has Gantt charts. There are software products that are designed for project management and still lack Gantt charts. They tend to lean on kanban boards or task lists.

While this is fine for small projects or ones that are being done in an agile environment, traditional project management is hard to manage without the use of Gantt charts. These tools visualize the project on a timeline, organize tasks and break the larger project into more manageable phases.

Without a Gantt chart, waterfall methodology is pretty much impossible. Therefore, let’s take a look at Notion and see if it has a Gantt chart.

Short Answer: No, Notion Doesn’t Have Gantt Charts

The short answer is no, Notion doesn’t have a Gantt chart. However, you can use Notion’s task list and project timeline to create a Gantt chart. Additionally, Notion has other basic project management features such as project calendars, kanban boards and sprint boards to help you manage your team’s workload.

But even building a Notion Gantt chart isn’t ideal. A Notion Gantt chart doesn’t have the robust features that project managers, teams and stakeholders expect from their Gantt charts. After doing all the work to create a Notion Gantt chart only to find out how limited it is will be frustrating.

Long Answer: Notion Gantt Charts Lack Key Features for Project Management

It’s not ideal to build a Gantt chart under the best of circumstances and this is doubly true in Notion. That’s because a Gantt chart built into this software is lacking in the powerful features that project managers and their teams need. Why create a limited Gantt chart that will only frustrate users when other software products have robust ones built in?

One of the main advantages of using a Gantt chart is that it links dependent tasks. Notion can create relationships between tasks through linked databases or properties, but there is no easy way to visualize these dependencies in a timeline or drag-and-drop interface.

In most Gantt chart software, users can drag and drop tasks along a timeline to adjust stand and end dates, durations and dependencies. In Notion, users have to manually update dates and adjust the timeline if a task changes or if there are delays. There’s also no resource management, built-in milestones or critical path, plus a lack of reporting is the final nail in the coffin.

If you need Gantt chart software for managing projects with all the powerful features you need from a Gantt chart, use ProjectManager instead. ProjectManager’s Gantt charts have planning, scheduling and tracking features that Notion’s Gantt chart doesn’t, including the ability to link all four types of task dependencies. Users can filter for the critical path and set a baseline to track project variance in real time. On top of that, it offers other project management tools like timesheets, workload management charts, real-time project dashboards and more. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

ProjectManager's Gantt chart has more features than a Notion Gantt chart — ProjectManager’s Gantt chart has advanced project management features that Notion lacks. Learn more

How to Make a Notion Gantt Chart Better With ProjectManager

ProjectManager offers a best-in-class Gantt chart that allows users to set a baseline, find the critical path and oversee resources in one place. Use it to track all four types of dependencies, set priorities and tag team members to collaborate in real time. No matter where you’re working, it’s easy to share files and documents to keep your project moving.

Notion Gantt chart import into ProjectManager — ProjectManager is free to use and has stronger Gantt charts than Notion. Get started for free

If you’re using Notion, but want a Gantt chart that manages all aspects of a project, then download the data from Notion’s project timelines and task lists as CSV files and import them into ProjectManager. Now you can use all of ProjectManager’s advanced project management features. Simply start a free trial of ProjectManager and follow these steps.

1. Use the Import Button on the Gantt Chart

Once you’ve downloaded the CSV files for your Notion Gantt chart, log into ProjectManager and go to the Gantt chart view. Then click on the import button, as shown in the image below.

2. Select the CSV File You Want to Import

As soon as you click the import button, a pop-up will appear. Now click “Select File” and import your CSV file.

3. Choose the CSV File Import Options

You may import the information from your CSV files into ProjectManager to create a new project or add tasks to an existing project.

4. Select the Data to Populate the Gantt Chart

Select what data to import from the CSV files and display on your Gantt chart. Fortunately, you can visualize all the information from your Notion timelines and task lists using ProjectManager’s Gantt chart and track many other aspects of your project such as resource utilization, costs and the critical path activities of your project.

5. Your Notion Gantt Chart Is Ready to Edit in ProjectManager

If you see a new window that says “Success,” that means you’ve successfully imported the Notion Gantt chart CSV file you can continue to edit your Gantt chart in ProjectManager.

What Can a Notion Gantt Chart Be Used For?

Even though Notion Gantt charts have some drawbacks that make them a limited tool for project management, they can still be used for many purposes, like these examples.

Making a product roadmap that shows the various stages of product development
Creating a basic project timeline to estimate the total duration of your projects
Assigning work to your team members and monitoring their performance
Planning, scheduling and tracking short-term projects

Let’s review the key features of a Notion Gantt chart to better understand its capabilities and limitations when it comes to managing projects.

Notion Gantt Chart Key Features

A Notion Gantt chart allows you to create a project schedule, assign tasks to your team members and track their progress, which makes it useful for implementing action plans for your organization. Here’s a quick overview of its key features.

Task dependencies: Notion Gantt charts can only identify finish-to-start task dependencies. Identifying task dependencies is important when creating an accurate and realistic project schedule. However, Notion can’t link start-to-finish, start-to-start or finish-to-finish, which can cause issues when executing projects.
Percentage of completion: Notion Gantt charts show the percentage of completion for each task in the visual project timeline.
Task prioritization: You can use a Notion Gantt chart to set a priority level for all project tasks.

Notion Gantt Chart Example

Let’s now take a look at a Notion Gantt chart example. This particular example is a roadmap template that shows the activities across product areas over the upcoming months. To start, let’s look at Notion’s project timeline tool. As you can see in the image below, it shows project task names, their due dates, duration, percentage of completion and arrows to indicate task dependencies.

By clicking these project timeline bars, you can see additional information for each task, such as their priority level, status, and subtasks. Now, let’s review the other half of a Notion Gantt chart. By default, Notion’s task lists show your task names, status, assignee, due date and priority, but you can add other columns.

Cons of a Notion Gantt Chart

A Notion Gantt chart can be used for making basic project schedules but lacks the advanced project management features needed for managing all areas of a project. Here are some of them.

Resource management: A Notion Gantt chart has no resource management features, which is one of the main disadvantages. While tasks can be assigned to team members, a Notion Gantt chart doesn’t allow for the allocation of any other type of resources to project tasks or track resource utilization as the project is executed.
Cost tracking: Similarly, Notion Gantt charts don’t have any cost management capabilities. This means it only tracks the percentage of completion of tasks but won’t be able to track the costs of resources such as people, materials and equipment.
Database-dependent Gantt chart: The process of making a Gantt chart in Notion requires the creation of a dataset, which is then automatically turned into a Gantt chart by the tool. While it may facilitate the process, it generates a Gantt chart with limited functionality, which makes Notion feel more like a data visualization tool rather than a project management software.
Critical path method (CPM): A Notion Gantt chart doesn’t have critical path analysis features which are very important for project scheduling. The critical path of a project is the longest sequence of tasks that need to be delivered on time, or else project completion will be delayed. Having a Gantt chart with CPM features will help you better understand what tasks need to be prioritized to complete your projects on time.

The Best Notion Gantt Chart Alternative

As explained, Notion has project timelines and task lists that can be used to emulate the experience of using a Gantt chart. For example, these tools allow you to assign tasks to your team members or create basic project schedules, but shouldn’t be used for planning or managing the execution of projects due to their lack of advanced project management features such as cost, resource or risk tracking.

Let’s look into some other reasons why you should use ProjectManager for your Gantt charts instead.

Manage Resources and Monitor Project Costs

ProjectManager’s Gantt chart view allows you to allocate project resources for all your project tasks, estimate their costs and then compare your project cost estimates with the actual resource utilization and costs of your project. Besides this built-in resource management feature, ProjectManager’s Gantt chart automatically syncs with real-time dashboards, timesheets and workload management charts so you can accurately track project costs and monitor how project resources are spent.

Multiple Project Management Views

Gantt charts are just one of the project management views that ProjectManager offers. You can also manage your projects using kanban boards, project calendars and task lists to schedule projects and manage your team’s workload. These tools can help you view your projects from different perspectives and allow your teams to work with different project management methodologies and styles such as waterfall or agile.

Pros of a Notion Gantt Chart

While a Notion Gantt chart has many limitations for managing projects, there are some benefits to using the software’s timeline feature.

View projects easily
Identify the degree of completion
See the status of the work
Find out who owns the work
Link finish-to-start dependencies

However, as we noted, the limitations of the Notion Gantt chart far outweigh the benefits. Notion’s Gantt chart isn’t a true Gantt chart and has minimal capabilities that most project managers won’t find sufficient. If you’re looking for a best-in-class Gantt chart that has all the in-depth features you need to plan and manage your project, try ProjectManager.