Gantt Chart

Can you do dozen of tasks at the same time? Absolutely No, that’s why in every single project, there are many people and each one has different responsibilities.

To complete a project successfully, you must control a large number of activities, and ensure that they’re completed on schedule. If you miss a deadline or finish a task out of sequence, there could be knock-on effects on the rest of the project. It could deliver late as a result, and cost a lot more. You need to see everything that needs to be done, and know, at a glance, when each activity needs to be completed.

Gantt chart enables you to see all these details visually. It involved all the tasks of the project within its time frame.

To set a Gantt chart, you need to know every task in the project. Who will be responsible for it, when will it be finished and what are the problems that might arise. This detailed thinking gives you a detailed overview for what to start and when?

Creating a Gantt chart:

• Identify Essential Tasks:

You need to count all the tasks in the project by use a work breakdown structure and for each task, note its earliest start date and its estimated duration.

• Identify Task Relationships

The chart show the relationship between tasks, For example, some tasks have to be done before the starting of other tasks and those are called “sequential” or “linear” tasks.

Other tasks will be “parallel” – i.e. they can be done at the same time as other tasks.

In Gantt charts, there are three main relationships between sequential tasks:

• Finish to Start (FS)– FS tasks can’t start before a previous (and related) task is finished. However, they can start later.
• Start to Start (SS)– SS tasks can’t start until a preceding task starts. However, they can start later.
• Finish to Finish (FF)– FF tasks can’t end before a preceding task ends. However, they can end later.

3- Chart progress:

The chart has to be updated as the project moves along. This will help you to keep your plans, your team, and your sponsors up to date.