Gantt Charts

The brief description of Gantt charts are shown below:-

(1) A Gantt chart is a graph of activities against time. It is the most effective way to present a project’s plan and its progress.

(2) A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt chart illustrates the start and finish dates of the tasks (activity) in a project.

(3)The task list comes from the Work breakdown structure of the project.

(4) Some Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities.

(5) Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical “Today” line.

(6) A Gantt chart can indicate:

• Milestones • Slack time • Activities on the critical path

(7) Once the project has started, the Gantt chart can also show:

• Activities that have started and their actual start dates.

• Activities that have finished and their actual completion dates.

• Revised milestone and activity dates.

• Revised slack time and critical path.

• Actual performance compared to the original plan.

(8) Dependency relationship between activities is represented as follows:

(9) Simple Gantt chart is shown in below figure:

                                                                                           

Reasons to use GANTT CHARTS

Gantt charts are convenient means of representing graphically schedules, appointments and events such charts help members of an organization to plan activities better.

Information about “WHAT” is happening, “WHERE” is happening and “WHO” will be present is valuable to concerned people in the organization.

It is good because:

• It plots activities as bars on time scale.

• It indicates different: Activities, Responsibilities, Estimated or Planned activities start and target dates.

• Actual start and target dates.

• It aids in: Scheduling activities, Coordinating activities, Evaluating progress, Reallocating resources in case of problems.

Advantages of GANTT CHARTS

(1) Gantt charts are relatively easy to create and maintain.

(2) Able to reflect the status of each project task at any point in time.

(3) Able to represent overlapping or parallel tasks.

Disadvantages of GANTT CHARTS

(1) Does not show a task interrelationship.

(2) These are not ideal project control.

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