Gantt Chart Vs. Kanban: What to Choose for Your Project?
Have you already realized that project management is not something purely professional? Have you noticed that projects are already everywhere and everyone can be named a project manager? If you still haven’t, here is the truth: projects literally entered almost all spheres and parts of our lives.
If you are planning to renovate your apartment during the vacation period, this is your personal project. Preparation for exams, a to-do list for an upcoming weekend or simply a list of books to read in three months — these all are personal projects. Add participants to them and you’ll get team projects. So yes, projects are everywhere and we can’t ignore them.
Here comes one of the most crucial points: planning and implementing project management practices. It may sound strange but in 2017 only 21% of all organizations used common practices. It is no wonder why many projects simply failed: they did not have clearly defined goals, statements, deliverables, and practices to follow.
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What project management practices exist?
Before speaking about practices, project management methodologies are also worth mentioning. They are all based on different approaches and all have their pros as well as cons. Methodologies can be traditional ones like Waterfall where there is the sequence of tasks and everything is planned in advance. Or it can be something modern like Agile where constant changes, improvements, and collaboration are crucial.
But if the list of methodologies is more or less invariable, project management practices differ. Only through personal experience teams and organizations can figure out what works best for them. Some common practices include the following actions:
- Make all the goals and deliverables clear and prepare a plan.
- Communicate with stakeholders and clearly specify requirements.
- Prepare a plan for the worst-case scenarios and be ready to implement it.
- Communicate with your team.
- Find an efficient project planning tool.
The last point is a must as project management software has become a necessity for any team. It is up to a team leader what tool to choose as they offer different levels of functionality, easiness, learning curves, pricing, and lastly, ways to deal with your project. Most of the efficient project management tools are based on two approaches — Gantt charts and Kanban. Therefore, they can be called online Gantt chart software or Kanban software. Let’s figure out the differences between approaches as well as their advantages and disadvantages.
What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a chart with two axes. A horizontal one shows a timeline of a project. A vertical one shows all tasks that look like bars. Thus, a project manager, a team member or a stakeholder will be able to see all the duties, how much time they take, their progress, and all other dates in a project at a glance at one place.
Advantages of Gantt charts
Mainly, all advantages of Gantt charts are connected with timelines that make them a powerful tool for scheduling. They provide with:
- Overview of a project. Thanks to its nature with two axes, a Gantt chart clearly shows assignments with start and end dates.
- Progress of a project. It is very simple to stay on track of a chart and be sure that plans go in the right direction.
- Priorities management. Task prioritization is one of the core features of a Gantt chart that allow managers to pay attention to those tasks that matter the most.
- Deadline management. As soon as a deadline is set, it will stay on a timeline.
- Dependencies between tasks. In project management, there are four kinds of dependencies: finish to start, start to start, finish to finish, start to finish.
- Critical path. This is a useful feature that shows how tasks directly impact the duration of a project and its accomplishment and shows the shortest chain of tasks to do it.
- Baseline. This Gantt chart feature allows seeing how current plan compares to the initial one.
- Resource management. Not all tools offer it, but resource management has become mandatory for Gantt chart software. Thanks to it, team members know how many tasks they need to work on.
No doubt Gantt charts have a lot of advantages. Otherwise, it would not be one of the most popular tools in project management but they have some disadvantages as well.
Disadvantages of Gantt charts
At the same time, a timeline with a clear visualization — can be a disadvantage too.
- Difficult to work with large projects. Too many tasks take too much space forcing managers to constantly scroll down projects in order to find a specific task.
- Managers can spend much time updating charts. The bigger projects are, the more time they require to insert information in them.
Where to apply Gantt charts?
These charts are applied in various spheres where there is a necessity to visualize tasks and dates and track progress. Also, they can be presented to anyone outside a project and show its status.
Kanban
This approach is named after the Japanese word and can be roughly translated as “card” or “sign”. It was first applied on a manufacturing floor in Japan. Now it gets obvious why the approach has this name.
Here, a project looks like a board where tasks look like cards in columns. It means that one card is one task. Projects can consist of as many columns as required. Each column corresponds to a stage of your plan. Usually, there are three typical of most project columns: To-do, In progress, and Done. But of course, it is up to managers to create as many columns as they need.
Advantages of Kanban
Mostly, advantages of Kanban are all about production or development processes. Managers and team members see what they need to do, what are currently doing, and what has already been done. On a large scale, boards and cards show what, when, and how much to produce. Therefore, Kanban provides:
- Simplicity of application. It is not only easy to present your project as a board with cards, but it also can be applied to the already implemented system. Thus, it gives more opportunities to estimate a project and realize how it is developing.
- Easiness to work with. Kanban project management, probably, is one of the easiest ways to break down projects into tasks even without specialized software. You only need stickers and a place to stick them.
- Environment for changes. This method is a good choice when task and priorities are subject to changes.
- Awareness. Much attention is paid to work in progress (just-in-time delivery) what allows team members to see what they are doing now. Also, all the upcoming or accomplished tasks are also in one place on one board.
Disadvantages of Kanban
Below are some disadvantages associated with Kanban:
- Not a perfect choice for result-driven projects.
- No strict accent on time frames as too much focus is on phases.
- Too many or too significant changes can cause high risks.
Where to apply Kanban
Kanban is a good choice for teams that need to know the status of their tasks: what to do, what is in progress, and what is already done. Also, the method is applicable and works well in combination with other methods that gives managers and teams more flexibility. Kanban is applied in various spheres with a bias for software development and technology-related projects.
Summing up
Gantt charts and Kanban are good choices for a plethora of projects from different spheres. Moreover, they can be easily combined. But if you take them separately, Gantt charts are great for visualizing tasks and projects on timelines. Kanban is good for showing statuses of tasks.
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Author bio:
Andrew Stepanov is a content writer and communication specialist at GanttPRO. The company develops intuitive Gantt chart software for efficient project management. When he is not writing, he spends time with his family, listens to rock music or watches sports games.
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