Managing Projects With Gantt Charts

Very
good project managers learn how to communicate and demonstrate the
current status of their projects. Using Gantt charts can be regarded as
the most popular approach project managers make this happen. A Gantt
chart is basically a horizontal bar chart which clearly visualizes the
schedule of a project. It could show just what has been achieved as of
this day, what has been completed (or hasn't yet been done) throughout
the previous days, and what still needs to be achieved in the coming
days. Consider Gantt charts as the timeframe of the project.

The
common Gantt chart additionally indicates the succession of work linked
to a project. It gives project managers a simple glimpse of the
situation, and as such, it enables fast identification of possible
problems in a project prior to them taking place. It was created by
Henry Gantt, a United States engineer in the 1910s. Primitive Gantt
charts were designed for building and ship making, however, its use soon
expanded to other different fields after proving its value in project
scheduling and planning. Gantt charts had their own limitations then,
nonetheless. During that time, everything needed to be drawn by hand,
normally with a graphing paper. Obviously, this is a major problem for
project managers back then, since Gantt chart had to be rewritten when
major adjustments must be done. The development of software, however,
changed this, enabling software for example Microsoft Project to manage
Gantt charts instantly.

The
most basic Gantt chart templates usually have two axes. There is an
axis running leftward corresponding to fixed units of the time and date,
which could be in days, weeks, months and even years. This all depends
on the estimated period of your project. There is also a vertical axis
in the Gantt chart which can be essentially an inventory of activities
that should be done in order for the project to advance, and finally be
completed. The simplest Gantt charts, those that don't involve complex
dependencies and overlapping tasks, generally just write down these
activities in chronological order. Bars across the horizontal plane are
placed adjacent to the tasks. These bars correspond to the expected
period for each one of the activities.

Technical
Gantt charts may include additional factors, like resource info and
sophisticated webs of interdependencies. Such Gantt charts are essential
if, by way of example, the completion of a job may trigger the
commencement of several activities. Some complex Gantt charts in
addition, provide status bars to exhibit the progress (or the lack of
it) in a selected process.

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Gantt Charts, Project Managers, Gantt Chart