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.