When your boss tells you to come up with a Gantt chart for your project, what do you do? Wait, don’t just get any Gantt chart samples from the internet. Unless you know what you’re doing, you might end up being scolded by your boss! You want to make sure that you know exactly how a Gantt chart works, and not just rely on Gantt chart samples from the internet!
Let us start with the basics. What exactly is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a very useful tool used to present schedules for projects. It provides a more or less complete view of the duration of the whole project. To give you an idea of a very simple Gantt chart, take a look at this sample:
| Activity | 1st week | 2nd week | 3rd week | 4th week | 5th week | 6th week | 7th week | 8th week | 9th week |
| TASK 1 | > | ||||||||
| TASK 2 | < | ||||||||
| TASK 3 | |||||||||
| TASK 4 | > | ||||||||
| TASK 5 | < | ||||||||
| TASK 6 | < |
Aside from saving you from the task of looking for Gantt chart samples, the above example shows you a Gantt chart in its most basic form. You have a project that spans 9 weeks, as suggested by the timeline at the top part, with 6 tasks which need to be completed. Take Task 1, for instance. The dark green bar under the 1st week column and to the right of Task 1 indicates that Task 1 is to commence at the 1st week, and is scheduled to be completed at the end of the 1st week.
You may notice the brackets at the end of the bar for Task 1 and at the start of Task 2. In this example, they signify that Task 2 can only commence after the completion of Task 1. The bracket is used for this particular Gantt chart sample for simplicity’s sake, but other Gantt chart samples may show either lines or arrows to signify the dependency.
Proceed to Task 2, and you’ll notice that this activity takes two weeks to complete. Between Task 2 and Task 3, there are no brackets present. This means the third task does not require the second to be finished before it can begin. In many cases where it is possible, the project manager can decide to move the schedule for Task 3 earlier to speed up the completion of the entire project.
Now take a look at Task 3 and Task 4. You may notice that both tasks take two weeks each to complete, but they both share a specific week on the timeline, the 5th week. This signifies two tasks which overlap, and which, at some point in time, need to be done simultaneously.
The bar designated for Task 4 has a bracket, and so do the bars for Task 5 and Task 6.
This means that both Task 5 and Task 6 need the completion of Task 4 before they can commence. Task 5 takes 2 weeks, and Task 6 takes three weeks. Both tasks will start off at the same time – right after Task 4 is marked as complete.
A very obvious element of the Gantt chart sample above is the lime green shade of the column for the 5th week. In many Gantt chart samples, this can serve as the indicator for the current week. This is very useful when you present a Gantt chart for your project on a weekly basis to provide status updates.
You now have a very basic Gantt chart. You may find that the Gantt chart is so easy to make, that instead of scouring the internet for Gantt chart samples, you may just end up with making your own yourself!