If you’ve never heard of the Gantt Chart then you’re not alone. It’s a rather unusual name for what is a project planning document!
The History of the Gantt Chart
The Gantt chart originated back in 1896 with the first ‘Gantt style’ chart (a Harmonogram). It was created by Polish Economist Karol Adamiecki. Despite it being an accomplished new tool during the Victorian times, the Harmonogram had its limitations. It was only written in Polish, thus hindered its widespread usage.The Gantt chart concept only progressed further when an American mechanical engineer named Henry Gantt stamped his name on it. He continued to develop it in the early 1900’s. Since then, the Gantt Chart’s popularity, format style and usage have adapted over the last hundred years.
What is a Gantt Chart?
A Gantt chart is a flow chart that visualizes how long any project will take over any duration. Without a Gantt chart, a project or task can only exist in our minds. Which limits our knowledge with how long a project could take. It also blurs our general understanding of the tasks required during a project. You could argue that outlining a project in a vertical list would be good enough, right? In some scenarios, it is but in the web project environment, a Gantt chart is a beneficial team tool.
How to use Gantt Charts on Web Projects.
In a fast-paced digital agency, it’s important to keep productivity at a high. So, to help cultivate a productive environment we need to make sure that the right tools and systems are in place. This is to help the successful completion of digital projects. The Fifteen production team are always seeking out new ways of being more efficient in the Fifteen studio.
That’s one of the reasons why it may be beneficial Gantt chart software. TeamGantt is a great tool that helps support and guide project scheduling.
Project Managers are the overseers, communicators, organisers, peacekeepers and everything between. In the web project environment, they’re faced with many questions. All relating to a project’s past, present and future each day. But the core questions most project managers seek to answer are:
- What tasks need to be done?
- Who handles what?
- How long is it going to take?
- How can we track our progress?
The key to understanding the answers to these questions is to keep everything simple. Over complicating projects and tasks cause unnecessary stress for the project and the wider team.
Key Insights Using TeamGantt
One important function in TeamGantt is adding project dependencies to tasks to make sure that everything gets completed. Especially in the right order should the time-plan alter throughout the project. To help broaden project information for the wider team, you can also see who is doing what. With the added ability to assign each task to a person or resource.
One of the biggest advantages of TeamGantt is that all project members can leave comments or upload documents to a task. Which provides one centralised point for all project communication. TeamGantt also has a filtering tool, which allows you to filter a project by person, date, or task. This helps the project manager see the project’s status. There’s also the option to receive email notifications of a project’s percentage completion status.
Making your Gantt Chart Stand Out
I’m a very visual person and love a splash of colour to brighten up anything and everything. The use of bright colours in projects helps to segment and layout information in an appealing and constructive way. TeamGannt allows you to set colours for certain tasks and groups. Project Managers can immediately see which tasks in the web project related to design, development and digital.
I particularly like TeamGantt’s quirky project management-esque description of colours too. Such as ‘Get it done grey’ and ‘Operation orange’.
If you’re looking for a simple way of keeping tabs on your project as it progresses over time. Or you’re having trouble breaking down how much time each task should take. Then, start using the good old Gantt chart. Back in Karol and Henry’s day, Gantt charts were laboriously drawn out on paper. Each time an amend was needed, the chart had to be re-drawn – how frustrating would that have been for them? It would be pretty interesting to see Henry Gantt’s reaction to his creation in today’s technology-driven world. where it only takes a matter of minutes to create a Gantt chart.