Decompose scope, then sequence the work
Gantt Chart vs Kanban Board: Choosing Your Delivery View
Deadline-driven dependencies or continuous flow? A decision framework, the metrics each view produces, and how to run both without chaos.
On this page
A Gantt chart is a commitment to a sequence of dates. A Kanban board is a commitment to a rate of delivery. Picking wrongly is not a tooling mistake — it changes which questions your team can answer.
Side by side
| Gantt chart | Kanban board | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of work | Task with a start and finish date | Card moving across workflow states |
| Optimises for | Predictability against a date | Throughput and short cycle time |
| Dependencies | First-class — arrows and float | Handled by conversation and blockers |
| Core metrics | Schedule variance, float, % complete | Cycle time, throughput, WIP, flow efficiency |
| Change cost | High — replanning ripples | Low — reorder the queue |
| Forecasting | Critical path and milestone dates | Percentile forecasts from historical cycle time |
| Fails when | Requirements churn weekly | A hard external deadline with heavy dependencies exists |
A decision framework
- Fixed external date, many hand-offs, hardware or regulatory gates → Gantt chart with the critical path visible.
- Continuous intake, support load, platform or content work with no single go-live → Kanban board with explicit WIP limits.
- Fixed date but emergent scope → Gantt chart for the milestone spine, Kanban for the work inside each phase.
- Small team, short project (under six weeks), few dependencies → Kanban alone; a Gantt chart is overhead you will not maintain.
What Kanban gives you that Gantt cannot
Flow metrics forecast probabilistically from what actually happened rather than from what someone estimated. With three months of history you can say: 85% of cards finish within nine days.
| Metric | Definition | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle time | Days from work started to done | Forecast a single item with percentiles |
| Throughput | Items completed per week | Forecast a batch of items |
| WIP | Items in progress right now | Diagnose why cycle time is climbing |
| Flow efficiency | Active time ÷ total elapsed time | Expose queues and hand-off waste |
| Aging WIP | How long each in-progress item has been open | Intervene before an item becomes a surprise |
Running both without chaos
- 1Keep the Gantt chart at milestone level only — ten to twenty rows, not two hundred tasks.
- 2Let the Kanban board own everything below a milestone; cards never appear on the Gantt chart.
- 3Map each board column to the milestone it feeds so nobody maintains two plans.
- 4Update the Gantt chart from board reality — completed throughput drives milestone forecasts, not the reverse.
- 5Report one date and one flow number per milestone: forecast finish, and current WIP against limit.
Quick reference
| Situation | Primary view |
|---|---|
| Office move with a lease end date | Gantt |
| Ongoing content or SEO programme | Kanban |
| Regulated product launch | Gantt spine + Kanban inside phases |
| Internal tooling team with rolling intake | Kanban |
| System migration with a cutover weekend | Gantt |
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