The most common challenge that professionals face in managing a projects is that it is difficult to predict time and effort required to complete the project tasks. If the traditional to-do list method doesn’t work your way, a Gantt chart is what you need.
To get started download a excel templated named Gantt Chart Excel. You can use this tool to easily create Gantt Charts within Excel itself.
Gantt charts are the most valuable tool to have in your project planning arsenal. It allows the managers to perform a variety of project management (PM) functions, including:
- Visualize critical path
- Track project progress
- Set baselines for project
- Measure project success
The Gantt chart allows project managers to effectively manage the projects with the right tools in place. These charts can be made quite complex and sophisticated. The prime purpose of using the Gantt char is to try and make things easier for the people that are involved in the project. In order to closely understand the benefits of using Gantt charts, we spoke to PM professionals to list down the top benefits these users have experienced.
Make Complex Information More Manageable
The Gantt charts are designed with an aim to make critical information about the project easily manageable and scannable. At a glance, users know:
- Who is going to work on a task?
- What is the deadline for completion?
- How a team member relates to the project as a whole?
The Gantt charts display this information using the horizontal lines spanning certain portions of the timeline. Different color codes are used to represent the team members or department they’re assigned to.
Enhanced Team Productivity
All details about the project like assignment of tasks and progress information is displayed publicly. This results in each project team member being accountable for the task.
Gantt charts display project progress in several ways, including:
- Project progress via “percent complete”.
- Users can check detailed information about a project with single click.
Effective Resource Planning
As a team member, you can easily distribute work more effectively to individual team member as you can see both current and future project schedules with respective timelines. Experts claim that the Gantt charts allow project members to split work more evenly across teams and employees.
Different Groups on the Same Page
The Gantt charts serve as the centralized project management or information tool that helps align different stakeholders. Each stakeholder is able to easily share information and stay updated with project changes and its progress. They are designed in a way to easily summarize complex project information for a varied audience. The project managers can choose to display only the information that is most important to team members.
For example, they may choose to display project milestones or project changes to the concerned team members, allowing them to choose their own appropriate level of detail.
Conclusion
IN simple words, the Gantt charts are designed to make project management simpler with each team member having detailed information about the project, its progress, relevant changes, completion date and a lot more. Using the Gantt charts is an ideal choice in the projects where an ease-of-access to all relevant information is required.
We recommend Gantt Chart Excel to get started. Start planning your project like a Pro.
