Gantt Chart is the most popular and practical means of describing activities (tasks or events) demonstrated against time. A Gantt Chart assists project managers and team members in viewing the start dates, end dates, and milestones of project schedules in one simple stacked bar chart. The schedule of the projects is present on the left side of the Chart, and an appropriate timescale along the top. Every effort is shown by a bar; the position & length of the bar indicate the start & end date of the project.
A Gantt chart helps prepare and schedule projects of all sizes, although they help simplify complicated projects. Project management timelines & tasks are transformed into a horizontal bar chart, providing starting and ending dates, schedules & deadlines, including how much of the task is performed per stage & who the task owner is. Keeping tasks on the right track when the team size is large is beneficial.
Why Use Gantt Chart?
When the Company sets up a Gantt chart, he needs to think through all the tasks involved in the project. As a portion of this process, the product manager will determine who will be accountable for a specific task, how much time the specific task will need, and what difficulties his team may face. This distinct thinking assists him in ensuring that the schedule is functional, that the competent people are allocated to a specific task, and that the product manager has temporary solutions for potential problems before commencing.
They also support companies to run out practical project features, such as the least time required for delivery and which tasks need to be done before other tasks can begin. In addition, he can use them to recognize the crucial track, the arrangement of tasks that must be done separately to deliver the entire project on time. Finally, the product manager can use them to inform his sponsors of progress.
Essential Elements of a Gantt Chart
It might seem strange when the product manager first looks at a Gantt chart. What do the bars or lines indicate? How do they correlate to the y & x-axes? However, after a second look, he sees that the worth of a Gantt chart is truly in its simplicity.
The following are the essential elements of the Gantt Chart:
- Activities or tasks on the left axis.
- Milestones on the top or bottom axis.
- Taskbars.
Benefits of Gantt Chart
- Improve Team Productivity
- Avoids resource overload
- Improved Time Management.
- Can visualize overlapping activities.
- Build a sense of accountability.
- Boost flexibility.
- Easily manage remote teams.
Drawbacks of Gantt Chart
- Need more work on designing and maintaining the Chart.
- Upgrading a Chart takes a great time.
- Product managers require scrolling & click extra buttons to view the leftover items.
- Stacks do not show the hours of the work.
- Difficult to realign the tasks from one region to another.
- Not easy to calculate the aggregates.
Verdict
The concept of the Gantt chart is well known as a method of project management and is considered successful. It is a practical and helpful way to schedule, follow, and control the projects in which various tasks are intended to be done in a defined time. It is vital to state that, as it can be observed from the preceding information, the tool can be used more comfortably with the aid of project management software as it would be simpler to measure the requirements of the constraints and put back the tasks according to the new aims by utilizing the project management software.