Gantt Charts As A Project Management Tool

A Gantt chart is a fantastic way for project managers to effectively show the schedules of project activities. It is extremely beneficial due to the fact that it visually displays the direction of the jobs and responsibilities in the project. This makes Gantt charts the right tool to speak the project's amount of completion to ordinary people, who will be able to quickly understand the project flow. The person considered to be the founder of this method is H.L. Gantt (1861-1919), who first developed the chart in the 1910s. Gantt was a mechanical engineer and industrial advisor from America. He passed away in 1919, but shared with us a heritage which has been advantageous to countless projects great or small. Large-scale construction tasks like the Hoover Dam utilized Gantt charts while in its scheduling phase. Very simple Gantt charts have rows and columns representing tasks and time accordingly. For each activity or row, a horizontal bar is found adjacent to it. The start points and end points of the horizontal bar are actually the start and end dates of that activity. The bars can also be color-coded, and will also be the progress indicators for a task. For instance, you can start off with a hollow bar, suggesting that the selected job has not yet commenced. As the project begins and advances, you can shade the hollow bar to indicate how much of the task has been finished. More technical Gantt charts may include details about people tasked to complete specific duties, enabling the manager to monitor the performance or non-performance of his individuals. Other Gantt charts, particularly for long projects, may divide each job, specifically the longer ones into several smaller tasks, which can be included in their own little Gantt chart. Yet more complex Gantt charts might also show complex prerequisites once the need comes up. Gantt charts have become helpful, without a doubt. Because Gantt charts fundamentally give you a top view of the entire project, it makes it possible for project managers to more or less come up with a sensible estimate of the project's duration. Since the Gantt chart contains a summary of the many necessary tasks for a project's achievement, project managers should be able to order and reorder activities in accordance with their prerequisites. In a way, Gantt charts can even offer project managers a "prediction" of what's ahead, which allows them to make the right decisions for making solutions for troubles before they come up.