Gantt Charts

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Introduction to Gantt Charts

Gantt charts are one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities displayed against time.

The position and length of a bar in a Gantt chart reflects the start date, duration and end date of a particular activity.

Gantt charts allow the following to be seen at a glance:

What activities are involved in a project

When each activity will begin and end

How long each activity will last for

Where activities overlap in time and for how long

Start and end of overall project

Additional information that can be shown in a Gantt chart:

How tasks relate to each other

Current status of each task

Resources required for each task

Who a task has been assigned to

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Gantt chart examples

The following simple Gantt chart shows the progression of a project to design a computer program over a seven month period.

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Gantt Chart Examples

This more advanced Gantt chart shows the progression of tasks and how they relate to each other.

The dashed line represents today, allowing the user to compare expected progress to actual progress.

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Making Gantt Charts

There are a number of ways to make a Gantt Chart:

Download a Gantt chart template from the Microsoft website for use in Powerpoint or Excel

Download software designed especially for making Gantt charts

Use an online interface to design your Gantt chart

When scheduling activities:

Schedule them in such a way that sequential actions are carried out in the required sequence.

Ensure that dependent activities do not start until the activities they depend on have been completed.

Where possible, schedule parallel tasks so that they do not interfere with sequential actions on the critical path. While scheduling, ensure that you make best use of the resources you have available, and do not over-commit resources.

Allow some slack time in the schedule for holdups, overruns, failures, etc.