The Gantt chart and the usage nowadays

Abstract

This abstract has been created on behalf of the course 42433 Advanced Engineering Project, Program and Portfolio Management E15 and the Wiki article that all the students have been enrolled to the course are assigned to write until 29/09/2015. The article has been defined and it should follow the following structure.

1. Big Idea: In this chapter a description about Gantt chart will be given. More detail, a chronology about this project management tool and the fields that it is used. In addition to that, the theory that this tool is based on will be described and finally how this theory reflects on the use of Gantt chart
2. Application: This is the second chapter of the Wiki article and here it will be explained how to use the Gantt chart. To be more effective the illustration of the methodology, an exercise with the whole solution is going to be provided and explained step by step. Finally in this step, the usage of the tool nowadays and how it has been changed with the passage of time will be explained.
3. Limitations: This is the final chapter of the Wiki article and here it will be explained the drawbacks and benefits of using Gantt chart. Moreover wherever it is possible, claims about this critically reflects, are going to be based on the literature.
4. Annotated bibliography: This is the literature that the article is based on. All the references (3-10) have to be reported and regarding this, a small abstract per reference should be written in order to explain where each of it has contributed for this article to be written.

Big Idea

Chronology

The first form of the Gantt chart was invented in 1890 and the man behind it was Karol Adamiecki. 15 years later, it was the turn of Henry Gantt to develop a new version of this chart which took his name. The popularity of the new type of chart was so intensive in western countries that any other chart similar to this, tended to be associated with Henry Gantt, taking his name.

Application

Example

In order to understand how the theory is applied to practice, it is appropriate to cite a virtual example of project of the Technical University of Denmark. This example does not have any relationship with any events or similarities of reality.

Exercise

The Organization and Management Department of the Technical University of Denmark organizes one-day conference on the "Electronic commerce". The organizing committee has set out what needs to be done and the challenge is to identify how many days are needed for the preparation of the conference. Also keen to establish a program of the event, which will help it to carry out its target within accepted timeframes and simultaneously will allow it to control all intermediary activities. The table 3.2.1.1 shows the immediately foregoing activities required for the organization of the workshop.

Solution

To manage the timing of the project and calculate the critical path, the applied method is PERT/CPM. The results of calculations appear in the following table.

It is observed that the activities B, C, D, H J and L are critical and they combine the critical path. These activities must be completed as they initially planned, otherwise the organizing of the workshop will be delayed. The sum of the length of the activities of the critical path is 53 days no matter how much is the earlier or the slower time of expiry of the critical activity L. Therefore, the organizing committee should start the preparations at least 53 days before the scheduled day of the event, so they can carry out all the necessary activities.

In the figure is given the Gantt chart for this project. The duration is in days.

Usage Nowadays

Software

Technology is moving with very fast steps and graphs which were displayed manually in the past, have been replaced by programs nowadays. Such programs are the followings:

1. Mindview - Gantt chart software
2. Smartsheet
3. GanttProject
4. SmartDraw

Using this kind of software, users' life has been facilitated and in principal, they can save time. In the past, it was very time consuming for managers to draw a project and the whole processes of it. Mainly of changes happened in the original design and the project should be drawn from the beginning.