A Project Management Beginner’s Guide To Gantt Charts in 2019
Beginnings tend to be intimidating. That is why sometimes we find beginnings as the most difficult part of any journey. Over the years, I have experienced that people tend to have the same sense of paranoia associated with the usage of new tools and software solutions.
Here at ProofHub, whenever a new team member joins, I see them being doubtful about using a Gantt chart, looking at and managing these boxes, lines, and arrows scares them. But once they are onto it, they love it better than anything for planning and visualizing.
Similarly, new project managers also tend to face these fears and sometimes doubt. Newbies always have a few questions in their minds. What is a Gantt chart? How to use a Gantt chart? Do they at all need a Gantt chart? Why should they prefer a Gantt chart over other software solutions?
This post will answer all these questions. Along with that, this will act as a guide for those who are stepping into the field of project management or those who have not used a Gantt chart so far.
What Exactly is a Gantt Chart?
First thing, a Gantt chart is a way of looking at everything related to your projects in one window. It gives a timeline view of all your tasks and projects. When you can clearly see everything about your project at one place, you can plan, schedule and adjust to fulfill your goals right on time.
How to Read a Gantt Chart?
To comprehend and read any Gantt chart, you should be aware of the following three terms.
1. Project Tasks
Project tasks are represented in the form of a rectangle on a Gantt chart. Every rectangle represents a task.
2. Task Duration
The length of every rectangle represents the duration of the respective task. This length is adjusted automatically according to the end date and the beginning date of any task.
3. Dependencies
There will be arrows between tasks that represent dependencies between tasks. In other words, these arrows represent the order in which tasks should be completed.
You can read any Gantt chart and also create your own Gantt chart if you are familiar with these three terms.
Flashback on Gantt Chart
Karol Adamiecki is the first person who ever used a tool of this kind in the mid-1890s. He never got much recognition because he had not published this tool for a long time but only in polish. Then, Henry Gantt, an American Engineer made his own version of the chart in 1910 and 1915. This version of the chart gained popularity in western countries and this chart was then recognized with the name of Gantt Chart after its inventor’s name.
In the olden days, the physical form of Gantt charts was used and every time a change in the plan had to be made, the Gantt chart had to be drawn all over again. It took hours of hard work. But these days, digital Gantt chart project management tools have made people’s lives way too easier.
Gantt Charts Help Your Projects in the Following Ways
Before giving you a detailed understanding of how a Gantt chart can help your team and team management. Here is a list of what you can expect from an online Gantt chart.
- Task and workload management
- Tracking time and progress status
- Setting dependencies and milestones
- Team collaboration
Here is an elucidation of all the ways in which a Gantt chart can be a bliss for project managers and teams.
Brainstorm About Your Project
Brainstorming is related to carrying discussions to produce new ideas and solve problems. The simple and visual nature of a Gantt chart provides insight, shows possibilities and helps in project planning. In a Gantt chart, you can easily move tasks around to see the various scenarios of your project. This way, you can land on your best plan for delivering your projects on time after comparing and calculating your options.
Some Gantt charts allow you to add assignees, milestones, and note deliverables too.
If you find it difficult to get started with Gantt charts, the inbuilt Gantt chart templates can act as a great launchpad for you to view your projects in a Gantt chart. All you need to do is add your tasks into these templates and here you have your Gantt charts ready to help you plan better.
Divide The Projects Into Smaller Tasks
While working on a project, it is important to break your project into smaller tasks. A Gantt chart helps you do this in an excellent way. You can break the bigger tasks into smaller ones and delegate clear duties and responsibilities. Each successful completion of a task boosts the morale of the team and keeps them going towards project completion.
As the entire project gets divided into various smaller tasks, the Gantt chart helps you manage your resources better. You can use filters to view all the tasks of any resource and understand their workload.
Determine The Critical Chain
Critical chain management is a part of project planning which ensures that the projects are delivered on time even if there is a possibility of delays of some tasks. Those delays are compensated by the buffer time between tasks.
A critical chain is basically the longest chain of dependent tasks. The critical chain method does not rely on estimates. So managers have to make sure than uncertainties are eliminated and safety buffer time is used between tasks to level down risks and ensure the safety of a plan.
Once the initial project schedule is made and task dependencies are set, a critical chain becomes visible. Now, the project managers make changes in the schedule to maintain a buffer time between tasks to meet deadlines on point even if some intermittent delays occur.
“Try ProofHub Gantt charts and analyze your projects with a click. Sign up here.”
Schedule On Deadline To Meet Deadlines
When you do your project scheduling directly on the Gantt chart, you will see than even the minor changes in the project schedule can affect the deadlines. So, visualizing the impacts of changes made by you can help you plan better in order to not disturb the deadlines.
Monitor Project Progress
A Gantt chart gives you a bird’s eye view of your tasks and their progress. As the tasks will progress or get done, your Gantt chart will keep on changing and give you the project status in real-time.
Gantt Charts In ProofHub
ProofHub is a project planning software that turns out to be a one-stop solution for all your project management issues. ProofHub is a collection of all the tools you need for project management be it Kanban boards, calendars, timesheets, proofing tool, etc. When it comes to the Gantt chart, ProofHub has well developed and interactive Gantt charts that help you plan and schedule your projects in the most optimum way.
Here is a list of all the features of the Gantt chart in ProofHub.
Gantt Chart Templates
Making a new Gantt chart all over again may seem a tedious task to many. ProofHub takes care of that for you. There are inbuilt Gantt chart templates where all you have to do is add your project tasks and information and you will get your entire project plan visible clearly for everyone to see.
Assign Tasks
You can assign tasks directly on the Gantt chart and get a visual view of all these tasks. The best part is that you get clear visibility into the workload of various resources using filters. Choose the name of the assignee and see what they are doing, when they are free or if they are overburdened with overlapping tasks.
Set Dependencies
By dependent tasks, we mean that the dependent task can begin only when the task on which it is dependent is completed. In ProofHub, if two tasks are dependent, you can link them in the Gantt chart using an arrow. Linking tasks gives a good view of what’s next. Also, if the first task gets postponed for any reason, all the dependent tasks get dragged automatically.
“Click here to learn how to set dependencies between tasks in ProofHub’s Gantt charts.”
Highlight Critical Chain
ProofHub has the feature which lets you look at the critical chain of your project plan in a click. The critical chain represents the tasks or chain of tasks that affect the deadline directly. Once you know which tasks affect the deadline, you can plan accordingly to finish them on time by removing the potential bottlenecks.
Associate Milestones
On the Gantt charts in ProofHub, you can associate milestones and mark key dates such as desired completion dates and project review meetings. Milestones represent important stages of a project. Viewing your project milestones on the timeline will help you analyze your project progress status better.
Apart from the above-mentioned functionalities, You can create private task lists and limit the visibility of tasks only to the assigned people in the ProofHub Gantt charts. You can also add tasks on your Gantt chart directly via email by using the Email-in feature of ProofHub. Every task list in ProofHub has a unique mail-in address. All you need to do is add this email-in address in the recipient list of your mail and the task will automatically be assigned on your ProofHub Gantt chart.
“Get your free trial of ProofHub today to explore all of its features. Sign up now.”
Conclusion
If you are someone who was not familiar with Gantt charts and thought of them to be some sort of spreadsheet chaos, then you must give it a try. You will understand that Gantt charts are not only great for managing your tasks and projects, rather, the ease of use is also incredible.
The visual nature of Gantt charts is the best thing about them. On the left-hand side of the Gantt chart, you can view your task lists, there is a time scale visible on the top. Then you have your tasks represented on this chart in the form of rectangular bars. There are filters in the ProofHub Gantt chart displayed on the upper right corner, you can use these filters to view the tasks of any particular person or tasks due by a particular date in just a click.
I hope that now you can imagine what this kind of access to your project information can contribute to your planning and scheduling processes.
Go give Gantt charts a try now to make your project management experience hassle-free. We would love to know if you found this article useful. Also, if there are any suggestions or knowledge to share on Gantt charts, we are more than happy to hear from you.
If you enjoyed this…
Read the other articles:
If you enjoyed reading this article:
Clap: so others can find it
Comment: if you have a question/suggestion you’d like to ask
Follow: ProofHub to read all the articles
