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Why is a Gantt Chart Popular Choice for Project Management?


Gantt charts hold a special significance when it comes to project management. They help to determine tasks and schedule them. Originally, they were designed by an American management consultant Henry Gantt in 1910. He took Karol Adamiecki’s concept who was a Polish engineer and management researcher. That concept was about harmonograms.
Gantt, in his turn, went further and created a more understandable format that would help manufacturers in supervising workflows. This is how a Gantt chart appeared with the main task to convey project information visually. In general, this chart contains information about tasks, schedules, time frames, and much more about projects.
Those were the times when managers created the charts manually. Fortunately, these days you can find online Gantt chart tools that can make your task creating instant and easier.
How to start using a Gantt chart?
Firstly, you will need to think of all the possible terms and tasks from your project. Also, think of duration for each task, associated risks and problems, and your workforce. These details will help to determine what will be the best thing that you can do for your project. It will also show how to make a potential use of all the available resources to bring a plan to success.
Having a deeper insight into the project is essential. It helps you to ensure that it is going to turn out the way you have planned it. Moreover, you get a clear idea about any issues that might arise while working on a chart. Besides, you get a calculated minimum time required to complete a project what helps to set priorities in the right way.
In short, there are the following steps to follow while you are preparing a Gantt chart:
• Determine priorities
List down all the activities and tasks that are crucial in a project and place them in your chart. This should include all the things required right from a start to a completion phase. Then, determine an estimated duration of each task and sequence them accordingly. Thus, you will get a clear structure.
• Identify relationship between tasks
Once you are sure about all the tasks in your project, determine the relationship among all of them. Tasks in most cases do not exist in a separate environment. They do have dependencies between them.
There are basically three types of dependencies: Finish to Start, Start to Star, and Finish to Finish.
• Choose an appropriate tool
There are two ways of creating a Gantt chart. One of them is to create your plan manually. In the second case, you can do it with the help of Gantt chart software. The best part about the second option is that it is much easier to work with already developed tools. They have all the basic features you need to create a Gantt chart.
Moreover, in most cases Gantt chart software is cloud-based. It means that an entire team can have access to a tool from any location at the same time.
• Keep track of progress
When managing a project, you need to keep updating it from time to time. Be in communication with your team throughout progress and reflect changes in your chart subsequently. Mark out all the necessary changes in it whenever you come up with a better solution and ensure that you keep track of progress.
Gantt Charts play a key role in scheduling and planning projects. They help in determining not only necessary tasks but also their duration and exact time. Different teams from different organizations use them. They include IT and software development teams, marketing teams, construction and manufacturing teams, product development teams, and a plethora of others. All in all, a Gantt chart is an efficient and visually engaging solution for project development.