Gantt charts are the project management tools that provide a project overview. It enables the user to do project planning, monitoring, etc. instead of going through lots of project reports and documentation, you can have a pictorial overview of the projects or the work in hand. It highlights the possible risks, the phases like work in progress or work achieved, etc.
One can use the Gantt charts to establish a comparison between various activities and the status of such activities in a project. As the Gantt charts are available online, it notifies its customers regarding the potential and actual time taken, delays automatically, and thus offers a smart way to manage the projects.
If your projects are dependent on a time table, Gantt charts are the best that can be here. You can keep a project overview and get notified of every deadline and submissions and improve regularity and thereby increasing the individualโs productivity over a particular project.
Gantt chart has various advantages such as:
- It increases teamwork:ย It gives tasks to a particular team and decentralizes the work. It is easy to plan and keep track or monitor all the work on a single page. It is easy to make changes and shuffle task priorities. It helps the user to identify, track, and solve any problem that has occurred.
- Organized information:ย By just a single glance, one can see what important tasks or projects are to be complete. It also becomes easy to edit the tasks and manage complexities like the relation of one task to the other, who has a particular duty, when should it complete? Etc. One can easily simplify the complex work and workflows so that it becomes easy to manage them.
- Shows progress publicly:ย Due to the division of work and public availability of the list of responsibilities, it becomes everyoneโs duty to keep an eye on the work and manage it according to the time. And by working in proper teams, the teams might increase productivity. It notifies every detail so that nothing is there that a user misses, therefore it is also known for its transparent views.
- Effective resource distribution:ย You can distribute the workload effectively by using Gantt chart tools. The projects in hand and the future projects are easy to track from here. They can begin with a project by distributing resources, making effective plans, and division of work and division of teams.
- Inform other groups about your progress:ย Gantt data helps to summarise the work. And by this, it will be easier for the other teams to stay updated with the task of the other team. They can also sort the information they want to search just by simple clicks.
- Project and team requirements:ย It keeps the team and the project requirement clear. Every individual can go through their task and having a better understanding and clarity of the project and taking responsibility. These charts show a pathway that begins from an unfinished task goes through various processes and finally ends when you achieve the milestone.
- Highlight potential issues:ย ย Gantt charts helps identifying the risks, the delays, time taken by a particular work or project to attain milestones, etc.
How can one make Gantt charts?
A Gantt chart projects the work in a Breakdown Structure, and for showing them pictorially, bar charts are taken into account for every project. The first such chart was made in the middle 1890s by Karol Adamiecki, who was a Polish engineer. But the idea was later taken by an American engineer named Henry Gantt between 1910 and 1950, and the charts became popular by this name are therefore known as the Gantt charts.
The Gantt chart is made up of various tools and elements such as a timeline that is defined, and it shows the start date and the end date of a project and each task beneath it, it shows the upcoming project task and the related activities. It tells the viewers about the owner of the project. It gives duration to every task and notifies when such duration has crossed the deadline. It builds relationships, teamwork, and helps to group the tasks.
Who can use these Gantt charts?
Anyone who needs to keep proper records and track the project can use these charts. It is not specified for any particular industry and is flexible with its usage. You can use these charts in all kinds of project management work, be a group task, or a solo task. The General Managers commonly use the Gantt charts, Marketing Managers, Operating Managers, Chief Executive Officers, HR Managers, CIOs, CFOs, Team Leads, et cetera.
Also, it is elementary to read the Gantt charts as these use horizontal and vertical blocks. The left column shows the tasks, and the length of each bar represents its schedule and required time.
Various Gantt charts software programs enhance the project management work and its efficiency.
There are a few drawbacks or challenges in using the Gantt Charts, such as:
- Increased complexity levels:ย There is a possibility that, instead of simplifying and managing the projects, due to a huge number of projects, the Gantt chart might show some complexity in handling the huge data. And in situations like these, it requires good management skills along with improvisation skills.
- Constant updates and monitoring:ย To get the best out of the Gantt chart service, it requires all the team members to monitor it constantly and upgrade it with consistency.
- Non-feasibility on paper:ย Initially, the Gantt charts were available in a physical form that is on paper, but now it has become too difficult to bring it on paper. Therefore, the only way to manage them properly is via digital means. Also, taking out their prints reduce the efficiency and effect of what the charts originally showed.
Gantt charts, due to its tools and work management techniques have become popular worldwide and are in use by most of the professionals. The Gantt charts have made the project management work easier and less time consuming and has also increased efficiency.
It has made working on various projects easy, as one can easily roll from one project to the other by simple clicks.
