Snakes and Ladders - Gantt

 

Snakes and Ladders – Gantt

Commonly used in project management, Gantt Chart is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time.

Gantt Chart History

Henry Gantt, (May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) was an American engineer and consultant.  Some references explain that was Henry who created the chart in 1910, but looking forward in the history, the first Gantt chart was devised in the mid-1890s in the Karol Adamiecki (March 18, 1866 – May 16, 1933) publications.

Karol Adamiecki was a Polish engineer who ran a steelworks in southern Poland and had become interested in management ideas and techniques.

However, Karol Adamiecki published his works in Polish and Russian language, due to that, his charts didn’t reach the popularity that Henry Gantt in western countries.

What is a Gantt Chart? 

Basically is a horizontal bar chart that illustrates the project schedule.

On the left of the chart, is the list of the activities and on the top the time scale.

Each activity is represented by a bar.

This set up will allow us to see

• The activities that we are tracking
• When each activity will start/end and how long it is.
• Overlapping between tasks and
• Start and End of the whole project.

Creating Gantt Charts

In today's world, they are usually created by computer applications, such as Microsoft® Project, Primavera Project Planner®, and others.

There are a lot of youtube videos, books, manuals and courses that will teach you how to use those applications. 

How to present Gantt chart to your stakeholders?

Here we are! There are hundreds of publications about how to improve our skills using these tools, but nobody told you the most important. 

BE CAREFULLY WHEN YOU’LL PRESENT THIS KIND OF INFORMATION.

When I started working as a project manager, directly I exported from MS Project to a power point the schedule, and here the face and comment from one of my lovely  users: 

Then,

• Don’t make assumptions, not all your stakeholders know what is a Gantt chart.
• When you plan a meeting, take in mind who is invited before to prepare the slide about schedules.
• Simplify.