Gantt charts are a commonly seen tool used in various aspects of project management. It is a very popular, efficient, and useful method to keep track of multiple activities, tasks, or events associated with a project.
The left column of the Gantt chart generally displays the category of tasks. The top row, on the other hand, indicates the timeframes of the activities involved. Using them both, one can construct a horizontal chart that efficiently depicts the progress made by various tasks involved with the project and the timeframe in which they took place.
Independent bars represents the graph of progress. The position of the bar and its length depict the duration of time. Its starting and ending points represent the beginning and the endpoints of time the activity took place.
The use of Gantt charted is easily understandable as it helps make various clear facts related to the project. Such as:
- Types of activities involved in the project
- Start and the end of each activity
- Duration for which the activity took place
- Whether various activities have an overlapping period of activeness
- Total duration the entire project was alive for
Current Usage Of Gantt Charts In Industries
Gantt charts shine when used for tracking projects. They can be supplemented with labels to provide more details about each stage of the projects. The additional information supplemented to the chart is easy to track and understand.
It helps to understand the connection between various projects, along with tracking the assigned resources to each project. The novelty of a Gantt chart, when compared to traditional graphs, is that it highlights the interdependencies and mutual benefits between various tasks rather than merely showing the big picture.
Gantt Chart Key Terms
For understanding a Gantt chart, it is necessary to keep a few key terms in mind.
Tasks: Tasks refer to the various kinds of jobs that are assigned to employees working on the project to benefit the objectives of the project. In a Gantt chart, you can easily depict the tasks with their beginning and end dates. The duration of the task, the personnel and resources assigned, and other crucial details are all clearly labeled for everyone to see.
Milestone: Milestones refers to instances in the project where you achieve important event or goals. It can be said to a task of zero duration that is yet to complete. Events that can be called a milestone are the start of an important task, successful completion of an important task, etc.
Summary Task: It is a special sort of collection of tasks. It comprises of sub-tasks that shows the complete information.
Task Status: Task Status helps the employees working on the project to keep a constant vigil on the progress achieved by them and to monitor the current deficiencies in the project progress.
Dependencies: Dependencies provide a glance into the medium or the link between various tasks and errands.
Assigned Resources: These generally comprise the list of human assets, Physical assets, and technological assets that are very much necessary for the functioning of the project. They are carefully selected and assigned to the team that will be working on the project.
Top 7 Gantt Chart Software
Seeing the benefits that Gantt chart provides to the industries and their functionalities, it is evident that many companies would create a virtual version of this tool instead of relying on a physical one.
PlanStreet
PlanStreet is one of the best companies that provide project management tools and resources. Online Gantt chart control tool, supplied by PlanStreet, can help with the facilities needed to plan and manage various projects simultaneously.
The tool makes it easy for PlanStreet users to divide the projects into tasks and subtasks. It allows teams to organize and schedule them efficiently. The duration of each job would also be adequately monitored and labeled in the Gantt chart.
The Gantt chart tool provided by PlanStreet has various benefits.
Manage multiple projects simultaneously: Since the Gantt chart involves dealing with various tasks involving numerous projects, some end up inevitably having an overlapping period of existence. Using a Gantt chart enables the project workers to manage them all using the Gantt Planning Tool. Collaboration between various projects makes it easy to share resources and ideas. It would allow the plans to develop in an even more efficient manner. Every contributor to the project can make changes to the Gantt chart. If the amendments are not relevant, then the project manager can quickly revert these changes.
Resource Planning: One of the main objectives behind the Gantt chart tool is to plan and manage the allocated resource for your project. By simply inputting the cost rate for the resources used, the Gantt chart would provide you with the complete details of the entire estimated budget plan.
Auto-Scheduling and Critical Path: The Gantt chart tool is capable of rescheduling the project plans and other details based on the information provided. It adjusts task duration, work hours, and dependencies across tasks and teams, based upon the priority of the Project Owners and Team Leads. You can even set up milestones and various other details using simple drag-n-drop functionality provided with the tool. Gantt Chart tool allows you to check up regularly upon the criticality of multiple tasks and guide you upon the path to project success.
Baselining: Comparing the current state of the project with its previous or critical stage. These also allow you to add individual snapshots and data that describe the state of the project at the current time.
Gantt project
Gantt Project is another Gantt chart tool available online like PlanStreet. It can be useful for both personal and professional or commercial use. It is available in Windows, Linux, and OSX versions.
Its basic functionalities include solutions to many popular concerns. Some of those are:
- Management of elements, such as milestones and tasks. It also consists of the beginning and ending date, the task priority, the duration of the job, the resources involved, etc.
- It helps in the creation of a hierarchy that keeps track of the costs incurred, project progress, along with the hierarchical display of task progression.
- It helps with the management of dependencies and baseline involved with the project and the team working on it.
- Gantt chart can be generated and downloaded in various potable forms such as pdf, and even picture formats
- It allows being exported from and imported into CSV to be able to be sent for analysis using spreadsheets and Microsoft projects.
Apart from all these features, Gantt Projects allows for collaboration between WebDAV servers, various cloud storage facilities. It provides a lightweight and efficient software solution.
ProofHub
ProofHub is a software that provides project management and collaboration services. It helps with planning out of a project and tracking the project progression. It helps with realtime collaboration and communication.
Implementation of this tool helps with increasing the project efficiency and following the deadlines.
ProofHub Gantt Charts enable the addition of various task portfolios to the Gantt Chart. The highlighted critical path progression helps analyze task priority.
You can make changes in project details in a simplified manner using the tools provided.
ProofHub is available in versions for Web-based apps, google play Store, and App Store.
Other tools
Gantter
Gantter is a Gantt chart tool that boasts many popular features such as cloud-based, community-powered, project scheduling capable, and project management ability. It provides community-contributed task scheduling templates, which can allow multiple people to modify and affect the engines.
It can collaborate with many scheduling apps that take care of day to day lives, such as Google Drive, Calendar, Hangout, etc. It is available in three variants: Gantter Cloud, Gantter for Google Drive, and Gantter for G-Suite.
Bitrix24
It is available as an app in the Play Store and App Store. It boasts of high reliability in its functions. Its primary focus is placed on the task shuffling and scheduling while enabling a comparison between current and baseline states.
It helps with creating a professional Gantt chart for multiple projects simultaneously. Its multiuser functionality is suitable for a small company.
TeamGantt
It allows reviewing the tasks performed in a graphical visual format. It helps with team communication and collaboration. Project planning and resource management are made easy with the use of this tool. Its function is flexible and adaptive and can manage itself automatically according to the deadline provided.