Gantt Charts vs. Kanban: Choosing the Right Tool

Two of the most popular project management tools often get pitted against each other. "We are an Agile shop, so we only use Kanban," or "We are a construction firm, so we only use Gantt."

But it's not about which is "better"—it's about which is right for your specific context. They solve different problems.

The Kanban Board

Focus: Flow and Status.

Kanban answers the question: "What is the state of this task right now?" It visualizes the process and limits Work In Progress (WIP) to prevent bottlenecks.

Best For:

Continuous maintenance / Support tickets.
Agile software development.
Content production pipelines.
Teams where priorities change daily.

The Gantt Chart

Focus: Time and Sequence.

Gantt answers the question: "When will this be done, and what is holding it up?" It visualizes the schedule and dependencies (Task B cannot start until Task A finishes).

Best For:

Projects with a hard deadline.
Complex dependencies (Construction, Event Planning).
Cross-functional product launches.
Client-facing roadmaps.

When to Use Both

For complex projects, the best answer is often "Both."

Scenario: A Product Launch.

Use Gantt to plan the high-level timeline: "Dev finishes in Oct, QA in Nov, Marketing Launch in Dec." This aligns the executives and the marketing team.
Use Kanban for the daily execution: The dev team pulls tickets from "To Do" to "Doing" to "Done" to actually build the features.

The Gantt provides the destination; the Kanban provides the steps to get there.

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