b2KIT

Project Timeline Planner

Create visual project timelines with phases, milestones, dependencies, and resource swim lanes on a scrollable timeline.

Tested tool guide Tested browser tools Checked August 16, 2026

What Project Timeline Planner does, with a checked example

A project plan is a list of dates until it is drawn on a calendar. This tool takes the phases, milestones, and dependencies you enter and lays them out on a shared timeline axis, with swim lanes grouping work by person or team. It converts your start and end dates into spans on that axis, so what you read back is the shape of the schedule: where phases overlap, where they touch, and what must finish before what. The most common surprise is that a milestone is a point, not a bar: it carries no duration and marks one date. The plan stays in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Worked example

A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.

Input

Discovery: start 2026-03-02, end 2026-03-13, lane Alice
Milestone M1 (requirements frozen): 2026-03-13
Build: depends on M1, end 2026-04-03, lane Bob

Expected output

Discovery renders as a bar from Mon Mar 2 to Fri Mar 13, 2026: 10 business days, in Alice's lane. M1 sits as a marker on Fri Mar 13, at the end of Discovery. Build cannot start before M1, so it begins Mon Mar 16, the next business day, and runs to Fri Apr 3, 2026: 15 business days, in Bob's lane. The two bars do not overlap.

March 1, 2026 falls on a Sunday, so the 10 business days from Monday March 2 end on Friday March 13, and the next business day is Monday March 16. Fifteen business days from March 16 end on Friday April 3. Both spans follow from the entered dates plus the dependency, which forces Build's start after M1.

How the result is produced

1

One shared calendar axis

Everything sits on a single date axis, so a plan never shows two conflicting scales. Each phase is a bar from its start date to its end date, and the duration between them is derived, not typed. The axis scrolls and zooms so a multi-month plan stays readable while a one-week detail remains reachable. Milestones are markers on one date, not bars.

2

Dependencies and swim lanes

A phase declared as depending on another takes its earliest start from that dependency, so chained phases line up end-to-end when their dates are consistent, and a mismatch between an entered start and its dependency shows as a visible gap or overlap. Swim lanes group phases by person or team, so two people's concurrent work sits in separate rows where overlaps are easy to spot.

Good uses

  • Sequencing a product launch: lay out design, build, test, and release phases with the launch as the final milestone, then see which phase slipping would push the date.
  • Spotting over-allocation before it happens: give each person their own swim lane and look for phases that overlap inside the same lane.
  • Explaining an order of work to stakeholders who will not read a table: the visual shows sequence, overlaps, and what must finish before what.

Limits and checks

  • Day counts can mislead across calendars. From Monday March 2 to Friday March 13 is 10 business days but 12 calendar days inclusive; if the tool labels spans in business days and your stakeholders think in calendar days, quoted durations will not match the dates on the bar. Quote the dates themselves when precision matters.
  • The timeline shows the plan, not the progress. It reflects the dates you entered, re-flowed by dependencies; a phase that has actually slipped still renders as scheduled until you update its dates, so the view can look confidently wrong near the end of a project.
  • An unlinked phase moves alone. Only phases declared as depending on another re-flow when a neighbor shifts; a phase entered with its own fixed dates stays exactly where it is, which looks like a bug but is just an unlinked plan.

Common questions

If I change the start of the first phase, do all later dates update automatically?

Only for linked phases. A phase declared as depending on another takes its earliest start from that dependency and re-flows when it moves. Phases entered with fixed start and end dates stay where you put them, so a plan entered without links behaves like a static drawing. Link what must follow what, and update the rest yourself.

Why does my milestone sit on a single day when the work around it takes weeks?

A milestone is a point in time, not work: it marks the date something is complete, like a sign-off or a launch. If it needs to stretch across days, it is really a phase or task with a duration, and giving it one makes it behave like a bar. This keeps the timeline readable and is standard scheduling practice.

References and verification

The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.

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