Gannt Chart

1. Gantt Chart:-

Gantt charts are used to represent a project schedule. Gantt chart is one of the project planning as well as project scheduling techniques. It is a bar chart that will showcase as well as track activities of the project over time and it will help you to observe the project timeline visually.

How to represent a Gantt chart:-

To represent a Gantt chart one should mention all the tasks which are to be considered in one column and the timeframe of the work which may be in weeks, months etc. in one row. The column representing the tasks generally lies on the left side of the chart and the row representing the timeline generally lies on the topside of the chart.

We need to mention all the tasks as well as the timeline in the chart. Once it is mention we need to fill up the bar horizontally such that it will cover up the time consumed by each specific task. After filling up all the bars for each task, the Gantt chart will be completed.

The completed Gantt chart will represent the schedule for the specific project.

If we need to prepare project schedule as per the work/task which needs to be completed by a specific person then we may mention them or their designation in the column instead of mentioned tasks.

Eg. :-

Here, we can see a sample of a Gantt chart where top row showing M1, M2, M3 … M18 is representing the timeline of the project in terms of months. The column on the left side is representing the resources which should be used for the project such as Project Manager, Business Analyst, Developer, Tester etc.

The horizontal bars are representing the timeline covered by each specific resource. For example, Testing is starting from month 10 and is occupied until month 18. The T1 phase of the testing is for month 10 and month 11, T2 for month 12 and month 13 and so on until the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is at the end of timeline with month 17 and month 18.

The Project Manager and Business Analyst are working throughout the project so their entire work timeline is covered up.

So as we can see the Gantt chart is very much important to plan or schedule a project. It is helpful in understanding and managing the dependencies between tasks. It will help us to determine how long a project will take to complete as well as to determine the needed resources and to plan the order in which the task needs to be completed.