Roadmap View vs Gantt Chart

Your GitHub Projects Roadmap View is a legitimate Gantt chart — but it is missing three things that separate a 7–8 from a 9–10 on C1-3. This page explains what those are and how to add them.

Watch first (3 min)

Use GitHub Roadmap to sequence tasks in a timeline view — GitHub on YouTube

Side-by-side: what you get vs what you still need to add

Feature	Roadmap View (automatic)	Annotated Gantt (you add this)
Task bars on a timeline	Yes	—
Start and end dates per task	Yes	—
PSM stage grouping (Analysis / Design / Development / Evaluation)	Yes (via Status field)	—
Dependency arrows (predecessor → successor)	No	Draw arrows manually
Critical path highlight	No	Colour or label each CP task
Slack time on non-critical tasks	No	Write float next to bar
Milestone diamond symbols	No (milestones look like tasks)	Add diamond label or symbol

What Roadmap View gives you automatically

Every issue or task rendered as a horizontal bar, scaled to its start and end dates.
A scrollable month-by-week timeline (configurable to week or quarter).
Grouping by Status field, so your PSM stages (Analysis, Design, Development, Evaluation) appear as lanes.
A public URL you can share with your teacher as live evidence.

This satisfies the C1-2 rubric wording — "Prepares a Gantt chart using software that documents all stages and activities" — provided all your tasks are entered and dated.

What Roadmap View does NOT render

Dependency arrows — no lines showing "B can't start until A finishes." You can note a dependency in a task description, but nothing is drawn on the timeline.
Critical path highlight — the longest chain of dependent tasks (which determines your minimum project duration) is not identified or coloured. You must trace it yourself.
Slack time — tasks that are not on the critical path can slip by some number of days without delaying the project. Roadmap View does not calculate or display this margin.
Milestone diamonds — milestones look identical to regular task bars unless you explicitly distinguish them with a label or symbol.

Why VCAA cares

The C1-3 level descriptor at 9–10 reads:

Documents the dependencies and the critical path. Discusses how the progress of the project will be monitored and documented.

A bare Roadmap View screenshot shows tasks and dates — that evidence stops at 7–8. To reach 9–10 you must make dependency arrows, the critical path, and slack time visible on the artefact itself. The examiner cannot see something that is only in your head.

How to close the gap

Export a full screenshot of your Roadmap View, then open it in Excalidraw (browser-based, free — excalidraw.com), Preview markup on macOS, or print and annotate by hand. Draw an arrow from the end of each predecessor task to the start of its successor; highlight every task on the critical path in a distinct colour; write the float (e.g. "+5 days slack") next to each non-critical task; and label all milestones with a diamond or bold text. Save the result as project-plan-annotated.pdf and commit it to your C01/ folder — this is the document you bring to the interview.

For step-by-step instructions, see C012-Roadmap-vs-Gantt.md (how to annotate) and C013-Annotate-Project-Plan.md (monitoring layer — planned vs actual — added on top).