Gantt Chart Scheduling

Abstract

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Gantt Charts are the foundation of planning and scheduling, thus perhaps being the most important element in project, portfolio and program management. The Gantt Chart is tool that allows managers to boil project parts and phases down to simple visual blocks based on the planned and expected duration, which can then be arranged according to interdependencies. Furthermore, as a visualisation tool, it provides overview of planned processes, in order for managers or stakeholders to keep track of what progress should be obtained at certain point in a process.

This article sheds light on the overall concept of Gantt Charts and the story behind, hence how and why it was developed. Furthermore, it will clarify why Gantt Charts are relevant both as a concept which is applied in several settings and as scheduling tool within Project, Program and Portfolio Management.

With an established reasoning on why to apply Gantt Charts to Project, Program and Portfolio scheduling, the article will continue by addressing how they are created. The creation is however not sufficient as the tool must be utilised and maintained actively and continuously within the timeframe projects, programs and/or portfolios, in order to provide the expected value.

Though, Gantt Charts are somewhat limitless with regards to the sizing and extent of the application, they themselves do not solve scheduling issues. The article therefore addresses the limitations of Gantt Charts and challenges that may occur when applying them, as well as opportunities that stems from them.

History

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The history of Gantt Charts date back to the 1910s where Henry Gantt introduced a new method of scheduling to ???????

However, a version of the method was already introduced earlier by ???? for the ????.

Henry Gantt developed the chart, as tool for production scheduling, which proved highly effective in the production of military material for World War I.

Overall Concept

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The overall concept of Gantt Charts is to provide a visual overview of time, tasks and progress within a process or project. Furthermore, the Gantt Chart is a tool to manage activities in relation to each other, in order to achieve a certain goal within a given timeframe. Thereby the tool is a way of structuring projects and manage complexity.

A Gantt Chart is a dynamic diagram used to schedule activities. The core elements of the Gantt Chart are horizontal bars representing activities of a given project. The length of the bars represents the duration of the activity and the bars are placed according to their earliest possible start within the timeframe of the project. The earliest possible start of an activity is determined by its contingent relations to other activities.

The following figure, shows the most basic setup of Gantt Chart. The Chart shows

FIGURE

Why use Gantt Charts? Within Project Management scheduling tasks is a vital procedure in the project managers planning.

Who/Where to use Gantt Charts?

Gantt Chart as a tool

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The following section describes how you as a project, program or portfolio manager can create, use and maintain a Gantt Chart. The tool comes in various variations and is often incorporated in management software. However, if a specific software is not available or if the scheduling is carried out by a group of planners, the Chart can be made as simple poster or spreadsheet diagram.

In order to create a Gantt chart for a specific project, program or portfolio, there are several perspectives to be taken into consideration such as the following:

- Recipients

- Timeframe

- Activities/Tasks/Phases

- Estimation

- Relations

Recipients

What is your role as creator of the Gantt Chart? Are you a project, programme or portfolio manager? And what is the expected usage; as an active tool to schedule and manage activities, as a visualisation tool for updating or perhaps both?

Considering the role of the creator of a Gantt Chart is essential to the level of detail, as project management calls for a deeper level of detail of activities than for example portfolio management. The level of detail may also be impacted by additional recipients or users, as a steering committee does not necessarily need a detailed task based chart, but rather an overview, illustrating how a project is progressing.

DTU Example

Considering an example of a project represented by the development and completion of a study and its deliverables for a university course. The user can be a given group of students, working on a project as a team with group deliverables. The group might use a Gantt Chart to estimate when to delegate and solve different tasks in order to deliver the expected and required deliverables on time, hence leading to a chart that represents activities on high detail level. Furthermore, the group might also want a less detailed version, where the course responsible, teaching assistants or contingent stakeholders can follow the progress of the group project.

Timeframe

Secondly, time must be considered; are you scheduling a project with a specific timeframe? A programme covering several projects which might be extended further when introducing new projects or perhaps a portfolio linked to a long term strategy or vision of an organisation?

Projects are usually time boxed early in the scoping phase, as the steering committee matches expectations of project completion and demands from project sponsors. The Gantt Chart is then time bound to the start date and end date of the project. When considering the programmes, the timeframe can be fluid as the content of the programme can be extended with additional projects, hence often pushing the programme end date. Thereby the Gantt Chart does not end until the programme is considered to be closed. The same is applicable to Portfolios, which with regards to scheduling, has a more undefinable end date.

DTU Example

When considering the DTU course deliverable example, the timeframe of the project is limited to the time between the start of the course end the examination or hand-in date. At DTU, this could be a spring course running from the beginning of february to mid may, covering 13 course weeks plus contingent holidays and vacation weeks within the period.

Activities/Tasks/Parts

As the Gantt Chart is a way of structuring and scheduling tasks in relation to each other, the planner must identify and define activities. Within Project Management this is usually done in the scoping phase of the project, where for example a Work Breakdown Structure can be used to break down the project objective to doable activities or solvable tasks.

In programme management, the Gantt Chart activities can consist of grouped tasks within a project, thus for example representing activities or deliverables of work breakdown structures from the different projects. When considering Gantt Chart activities in Portfolio Management, these might consist of entire projects or perhaps large deliverables of the different projects.

DTU Example

In the example of considering a course deliverable as project, the activities on a stakeholder management level could consist of for example Research, Collecting Data, Data Processing, Assessing results, Solutions design and reporting. Furthermore the activities could be split into well defined tasks to meet the purpose of delegating work to group members and managing the progress. For example, the research activity could be broken down into tasks of identifying, evaluating and sorting existing research, whereas the data collecting activity could have a task of making a survey, conducting the survey, a field observation study, collect quantitive dataset from a stakeholder amongst others. Thereby the Gantt Chart can both accommodate the needs of the group and the stakeholders.

Estimation and time

In order to schedule the activities, a timespan or duration must be assigned to the activities. With regards to project management, duration is often the result of an estimation based on actual experience of project organisation members or organisational experience and data from previous comparable tasks. When considering Programmes and Portfolios, the time estimation is limited to the estimated duration of larger deliverables or entire projects.

Furthermore, the duration estimation must determine the time unit type; will the terminology be based on days, weeks or perhaps months? This is also impacted by whether the chart covers project, programme or portfolio management, as well as the overall duration and the level of detail of the activities.

DTU Example

Considering the identified tasks and activities, the group members will use their experience from previous courses to estimate, how much time each activity and tasks should be assigned. This could lead to the task of creating a survey being estimated to one week whereas the actual survey conduction could be estimated to two weeks, and so on.

Relations

The last yet very important element of Gantt Chart Scheduling is the relation between activities. A relation exists if a task cannot for example be commenced or finished before or until another specific task has been fulfilled. This is the essence of Gantt Chart Scheduling, as the relations determines when the different activities can be conducted, hence controlling the time of the final delivery and the overall duration.

Furthermore, external factors can have an impact on the commencement, fulfilment and duration of activities. An example of an external factor is weather or temperature, which could dictate that a project should be conducted at a certain time of year. Furthermore, also politics, legislation, funding, global or national crisis amongst others, can have an impact on the relations between activities as well as progress.

DTU Example

The DTU group will find that the activity of conducting their survey cannot be performed until the survey is actually developed. Therefore, the actual conduction is dependent on the survey being created, thus the two activities are related. Furthermore, the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2021, is causing the group to extend the duration of their field study due to crowd restrictions.

How to use

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Further: Software, Automation, Analytics