I find it difficult to make this look truly professional.īottom line: It works. It’s also difficult and time-consuming to update when the project changes. However – it is not a very granular solution and it is difficult to show details. If you’re already in PowerPoint for a presentation, why not just use PowerPoint for the chart, too? It also is easy to match to your PowerPoint theme as you can simply select the colors. This is quick to set-up and the drawing tools help set alignment / distance to keep it neat. As a junior project manager, this is the most common approach I had seen – and I realized that I absolutely hated it when a project plan needed to be updated. PowerPoint’s drawing tools, in combination with a table, can be a valid solution for maintaining a global project plan. These were oriented more at long term project/resource planning and not the kind of presentation I was looking for.

Tom’s Planner made it the furthest, but none of them were actually used in the final draft of a presentation towards a client. I did look into a few online alternatives such as Smartsheet Online Gantt Chart, Team Gantt and Tom’s Planner. Very granular, interesting changes but too detailed for presentationsĮasy to set-up but very dated and and a little difficult to maintainĮasy to setup, easy to maintain, gorgeous Good enough for an overview on a project site but not for a customer presentation SharePoint / Office 365 project site Gantt chart

Here are the different solutions I reviewed: SolutionĮasy to set-up with more granular detail than PowerPoint, but difficult to maintain Note #2: The rating does not reflect the product as a whole but simply as a solution for high level planning and customer presentations. Note #1: I have not received any kind of compensation: my opinions are completely my own. I have chosen to go with the paid version with a yearly cost of $50 – I think it’s completely worth it for how much it simplifies my project management tasks. TL DR: I really like Office Timeline, which gives quite a few good options even just with the free version.

Ms project print timeline and gantt