Top Reasons Gantt Charts Improve Project Planning Efficiency

By Author: Steve Wilheir
Total Articles: 5
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Finally you can see what you are doing!
Looking at the start and end dates for tasks what you’re left with without a Gantt Chart. Each row of the project plan requires you to think about the dates, and position those dates in the context of preceding and dependent tasks. The thought process of visualizing these dates in your head requires valuable thinking time and can result in a great deal of confusion if many tasks are involved in the project. A Gantt Chart enables the project manager to visualize the entire project plan, often on one page. This visualization enables the project manager to see new relationships between tasks, and to continually refine the plan. Major improvements can be made in your Gantt Chart by identifying tasks that might run in parallel, rather than sequentially.

Little time is required to produce and maintain Gantt Charts
Another main advantage of this type of chart is that they are easy to create. Two axes with tasks and time period to be mentioned and the amount of work done in certain period of time are marked. Certain tools are there with which we can create a chart within ...
... no time if the prerequisites are known. In Microsoft Project, for example, one can access an built-in Gantt chart generator based upon an action item list the project manager puts together with the help of the project team. For the projects with specific due dates, the generator can help plot milestones as well as important dates related to the project's delivery. To do this, the project manager has to determine the timeline in your Gantt chart for the various critical tasks included in the project and then work backwards so dependent tasks are accomplished in time to hit the target.

You can communicate more effectively with stakeholders
Many high performing business people operate visually. Your Gantt chart provides a means for these people to navigate simply through a very high level of complexity in your project plan. As the data is "visualized for them", all stakeholders are looking at the same representation of the information.
The milestones and landmarks in a project can be represented very effectively in this chart. This format is preferred by many modern managers. As such, these charts need no further interpretation for presenting to sponsors, executives, and higher officials. From a single sheet graph you can show where there is a lag in the project and fix it before the issue worsens. Since this chart is created in very short amount of time, this allows for more time for decision making to decide how to handle the trends being revealed as the plan is updated.

You can see ahead…for miles
A good Gantt chart tool will enable you to plan well in advance. Sometimes visualizing longer term plans can feed back to changing your short term plans. A good Gantt chart should let you plan far into the future, however you should also be able to change your view so that the entire planning range can be visualized on one page. The main advantage of this chart is it is easily understandable. The information stored in it is very transparent and thus easily identifiable. Thus it is used in the important phase named planning phase in the project. By seeing the horizontal bars we can easily make out how much work has been completed in a given period of time which helps to keep track of the progression in the project activities.

You can identify resource clashes
Using a Gantt chart, you can easily see periods when a resource is scheduled on multiple tasks. If this scheduling is a full time allocation to each task, then something as to give. A Gantt chart enables you to see these emerging issues in advance and take corrective and preventative action, otherwise known as project management.

Steve Wilheir has been writing articles for more than 5 years about a variety of management topics. He is an expert on the Gantt Chart. If you'd like to learn more about Gantt charts and see how gannt chart works, check out his website at Gantt-Chart.biz.