How to plan a project in your browser in 10 minutes

Published May 28, 2026

The hardest part of planning a project is the blank page. So let’s skip the theory and actually build one. This is a ten-minute walkthrough that takes you from nothing to a real, shareable plan — no install, no account-required free trial countdown, just a browser tab.

We’ll plan a small launch as the example. Adjust the specifics to your own work as you go.

Minute 0–2: block out the phases

Start big, not small. Don’t open a blank task list and start typing TODOs — you’ll drown. Instead, name the 3–5 phases the project moves through. For a launch that might be:

1. Foundations
2. Build
3. Polish
4. Launch

Drop each phase onto the timeline as a span. You now have the skeleton of a plan and a sense of how long the whole thing runs.

Minute 2–5: add the real tasks

Under each phase, add the actual tasks. Keep them coarse — “Design system,” not “pick a button radius.” For each task you really only need four things: a title, a start, an end, and an owner.

Resist the urge to fill in every field. A title, dates, and an owner is enough to make the plan useful today. You can always add notes later.

Minute 5–7: connect the dependencies

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that makes a plan a plan instead of a list. Link each task to the one it unblocks: Build depends on Foundations, Polish depends on Build, and so on.

Now the magic: when you drag a task later because something slipped, everything downstream moves with it. You instantly see whether the launch date is still real. (More on why this matters: real-time vs. status-report project management.)

Minute 7–9: sanity-check capacity

Open the team-capacity view and look for anyone sitting above ~100% in a given week. If one person is carrying three overlapping tasks, move one — to someone else, or to the next week. Better to find the overload now than the Friday before launch. (The 5-person rule goes deeper here.)

Minute 9–10: share it

Invite the team. Everyone opens the same plan in their browser and sees the same live picture — no exporting, no emailing a file around. From here, working the plan is just dragging tasks and checking things off; the timeline, board, and capacity stay in sync on their own.

That’s a complete, honest plan in ten minutes. Building and exporting is free; inviting the team is $3.99/mo per person.

Open a blank plan and try it. Related: what a Gantt chart is actually for.