Creating and using a Gantt chart

Creating and using a Gantt chart
AGantt chartis a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and
summary elements of a project and the dependency relationships between activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status
using percent-complete shadings and a vertical “TODAY” line.
The first known Gantt chart was developed in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, who called it aharmonogram. Adamiecki did not publish his chart until
1931, however, and then only in Polish. The chart is commonly known after Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed his chart sometime between
1910 and 1915.
Although now regarded as a common charting technique, Gantt charts were considered revolutionary when they were introduced. In recognition of
Henry Gantt’s contributions, the Henry Laurence Gantt prize is awarded for distinguished achievement in management and in community service.
This chart is used also in Information Technology to represent data that has been collected. (first three paragraphs appear in Wikipedia Gantt chart
entry, citing these three sources:
 H.L. Gantt,Work, Wages and Profit, published by The Engineering Magazine, New York, 1910; republished as Work, Wages and
Profits, Easton, Pennsylvania, Hive Publishing Company, 1974, ISBN 0879600489.
 Blokdijk, Gerard (2007).Project Management 100 Success Secrets. Lulu.com. p. 76. ISBN 0980459907.
http://books.google.com/books?id=dgB-QWHlnrUC&pg=PA76&dq=Adamiecki+Gantt&as_brr=3&sig=Jp-mgVODNRJpxqBRM1PYJbs7mOU.
 Peter W. G. Morris,The Management of Projects, Thomas Telford, 1994, ISBN 0727725939, Google Print, p.18)
There are two easy ways to create a Gantt chart to incorporate in the status report for a project in this class: (1) use free software, or (2) create
a table in MS Word or Corel WordPerfect.
CREATING A GANTT CHART USING FREE SOFTWARE:
One free Gantt chart creator is found onhttp://www.ganttproject.biz/and an example of its output appears below:
This chart depicts milestones in completing “The Johnson Genealogy Project.” The goal of the project is “to provide a written history and
genealogy of the Johnson family from 1730 to the present for sale and distribution to family and historical organizations.”
$Birth, death, marriage, and issue information must be from official sources or verified by at least one other source to be consideredAfirm@
rather thanAtentative.@
$Generation stories must be documented by notation as to WHO said WHAT about an ancestor, WHEN it was said, and HOW it was known.
ATraditional@stories may be used if labeled as such, but every effort must be made to identify the SOURCE of the story.
$Only events and activities actually affecting a particular generation should be developed for the book. For example, the flu epidemic of 1917
impacted most AmericansCdid any Johnson contract or die from the flu?
$Identification of subjects of photographs, portraits, and related graphic items must be documented. The time period and circumstances
surrounding the picture should be described wherever possible.
Note that the entire project is addressed in this depiction – not merely the collection, processing, and verification of the information involved.
Note also that the actual Gantt chart for a complex project would have many more elements and the resulting interdependences would also be
included. This depiction of a project leads to a NETWORK DIAGRAM, also called a PERT CHART (Program Evaluation Review Technique) or
CRITICAL PATH chart. All of these techniques are used in Project Management, together with Lean Manufacturing concepts, including Six Sigma.
If you are writing for managers using any of these applications, you should become thoroughly familiar with them.
To insert a Gantt chart from this program into your text file, export the completed chart as a JPG file and paste it in as a picture.
CREATING A GANTT CHART USING TABLE TOOLS:
You can create a simple Gantt chart by creating a table in MS Word or Corel WordPerfect. Because this involves creating a cell for each unit of
time, we will reduce the detail to weeks and create a 13 by 9 cell table (which is NOT as precise as the Gantt Project software, but will do for your
proposal to produce a researched proposal for a company or community).
Now we will adjust the cell width and fill in the X and Y axes information:
JohnsonFamily Book Dec Jan Feb
Week 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
ResearchFamily
GetPictures
Anecdotes
Verify
Draft
Review
Publish
Finally, we can adjust lines, color cells to distinguish different activities and their specific durations, and remove the lines between the cells that are
colored to represent the activities(using the “merge cells” command). Here is the finished product:
OHNSONAMILY OOK Dec Jan Feb
Week 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
ResearchFamily
Get Pictures
Anecdotes
Verify
Draft
Review
Publish
Note that the activities that take less time than the time period selected (in this example, one week) lose their accuracy in this scale (note the
Review and Publish time lines); however,using a cell to represent a day would create a 76-cell width which, if reduced, would result in a Gantt chart
that would be too small to read.
The number of steps required to explain the sequence and relationship of tasks you will need to complete to turn in your researched proposal on
time are small and the time can be expressed accurately enough in whole weeks, so the table version is adequate as a planning effort for this
assignment.
The Gantt Chart is a very useful planning and status checking tool that can keep a manager on track in completing a complex project on time. A
good Gantt Chart (one that includes all of the key steps needed to complete a project) can avert disaster as you complete a complex project
bounded by non-negotiable time constraints (such as a paper due on a specific day).
PERT CHARTS
A PERT chart is a project management tool used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project. PERT stands forProgram Evaluation
Review Technique, a methodology developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s to manage the Polaris submarine missile program. A similar
methodology, theCritical Path Method(CPM) was developed for project management in the private sector at about the same time.
A PERT chart presents a graphic illustration of a project as a network diagram consisting of numberednodes(either circles or rectangles)
representing events, or milestones in the project linked by labeledvectors(directional lines) representing tasks in the project. The direction of the
arrows on the lines indicates the sequence of tasks. In the diagram, for example, the tasks between nodes 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 must be completed in
sequence. These are calleddependentorserialtasks. The tasks between nodes 1 and 2, and nodes 1 and 3 are not dependent on the completion
of one to start the other and can be undertaken simultaneously. These tasks are calledparallelorconcurrenttasks. Tasks that must be completed
in sequence but that don’t require resources or completion time are considered to have event dependency. These are represented by dotted lines
with arrows and are calleddummy activities. For example, the dashed arrow linking nodes 6 and 9 indicates that the system files must be
converted before the user test can take place, but that the resources and time required to prepare for the user test (writing the user manual and
user training) are on another path. Numbers on the opposite sides of the vectors indicate the time allotted for the task.
The PERT chart is sometimes preferred over the Gantt Chart, another popular project management charting method, because it clearly illustrates
task dependencies. On the other hand, the PERT chart can be much more difficult to interpret, especially on complex projects. Frequently, project
managers use both techniques. (http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/PERT-chart)
APPLICATION EXAMPLE:
At CIA, Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) compliance verification required analysis of overhead photography to discover any alteration to
Soviet missile silos (nuclear warheads were larger, requiring visible construction modifications). Discrepancies spotted then required a check of
millions of photographs by six analysts requiring at least 72 hours (432 analyst hours). I developed a PERT program that allowed one analyst to
recover critical stage photos in less than two hours. This chart depicted visible stages in the construction process, the time required for each
stage, with other factors including weather and holiday stand-downs. One analyst could search backwards from the date of the photo depicting
the current stage of modifications to the silo by searching only the dozen or so photos from the most likely date for the preceding identifiable
stage. While it could be argued by the Soviets that a single photo did not represent a violation; an aggregate of photos showing the stages of
modifying the silo could not be contested.