What are Gantt Charts?

Most users of MS Project will agree that the Gantt chart is the most important and useful scheduling feature of this project management application. Many of whom will use the Gantt chart and not much else. They may use the Resource Sheet for resources and possibly the Network Diagram view, but for the most part the Gantt chart will be the most often employed.

What is a Gantt Chart?

It is best defined as a horizontal bar chart that was developed as a production control tool in 1917 by Henry L. Gantt, an American engineer and social scientist, and which has become a favourable tool for use in project management. Its advantage lies in the fact that it is a graphical illustration of a project schedule that assists with the planning, coordination, and tracking of specific tasks within a project.

A Gantt chart is effective because it aids in planning a project that has many components and a number of team members. A Gantt chart plans the tasks that need to be completed, sets a timeline for the tasks, plans the allocation of resources and creates critical paths for tasks.

Gantt Charts are extremely useful because they are easily read and interpreted by a wide audience. Gantt charts do however have their limitations. When a project is a small one and all of the Gantt chart lines fit on one page it is easy to manage, but when the project becomes bigger and the Gantt chart extends over a few pages it becomes too cumbersome to work with easily.

How to use a Gantt Chart

Identify all activities to be completed.

Begin your Gantt chart by creating a list of all the activities that need to be completed during the project, including earliest start date and an estimated time-frame for completion, and then list these activities in sequential order.

Identify task durations

Using previous experience and project member's input create a time-line for the duration of the project and each individual task and activity. You can colour code the time blocks to denote different types of activities. You can move the time blocks around to report on actuals versus planned, to re-schedule, and to create new plan updates.

Identify resources

Verify that resources are available when needed for a task and not being used for another task.

Identify costs

At the end of each line you can show as many cost columns for the activities as you require. A Gantt chart can be used to keep track of progress for each activity and how the costs are running. Cost columns can show planned and actuals and variances, and can calculate whatever totals, averages, ratios, etc. you need.

The great thing about making use of Gantt charts for project management is that not only will they help with the planning phases of the project, where you must decide the course of action to take, but they will also help monitor the project and keep it on track. To learn more about Gantt charts and their effectiveness, MS project 2003 courses, from beginner to advanced, will be well worth attending.