Dealing with project schedules can be a very frustrating, most especially when the project is relatively big. As a project manager, you need to be on top of your schedule. You have to keep track of every task’s schedule in your project, monitor their progress, and ensure that all tasks meet their deadlines. One of the best ways you can do just that is by employing a Gantt chart for your project’s scheduling needs.
“So what exactly is this Gantt chart thing? Do you have a sample Gantt chart that I can use outright?”, you might ask. Indeed, obtaining a sample Gantt chart is quick and easy, but there’s more to that. You should realize as a project manager that understanding how a Gantt chart works is more important than taking a sample Gantt chart from the internet and using it right away. In a nutshell, Gantt charts are a type of horizontal bar chart that provides an overview of a project’s schedules. A section of the Gantt chart, usually to the left, consists of a list of tasks or processes involved in a project. To the right of the Gantt chart is the actual timeline of the whole project. Adjacent to each task is a bar running across the timeline, and this represents each task’s schedule.
You may see that the bars in a sample Gantt chart vary in length, and they can be positioned in a certain order. The length and location of each bar signify the estimated start and end dates of the task adjacent to it. In many Gantt charts, you may notice that certain tasks overlap. This is because most projects employ multitasking – certain processes need to be done the same time as another. Most projects also have tasks that have other prerequisite tasks. For instance, if task A is a prerequisite of task B, then task B cannot commence without task A’s completion. There are also times when task B requires the completion of task A and that of another task, task C, before it can begin. Still, there are times when task C’s completion is required for both task A and task B to start off. Prerequisites or dependencies are the reasons why deadlines are crucial – if a prerequisite task is delayed, then the whole project could be delayed.
In many sample Gantt charts, you will see that these bars are colored, with good reason. A Gantt chart made for large projects with many tasks can be a pain to look at. You can apply color coding to organize bars into groups. For instance, you can apply a blue shade to the bars of the tasks which need to be done by programmers, red to those which need to be done by quality assurance, or purple to those which need to be completed by analysts. The choice of colors here depends on you, but it is recommended that you use a hue that can be easily identified and remembered by your colleagues or personnel.
Now that you have an idea of what a Gantt chart is and how it works, using a sample Gantt chart or a Gantt chart template should be much more easier. After having read this article, you can be sure you know what you are doing!