When Henry Gantt plotted out projects in the steel industry using bars to show the progress of tasks, I doubt he realized that he was going to revolutionize how projects were managed. Gantt charts display horizontal bars that provide a graphical representation of the duration of a task, which makes them a great tool to show the overall scale and duration of a project in a visual manner.
However, when you add on symbols for milestones, lines showing the dependencies between tasks, resource names and the lag on an activity, the charts get messy. They also typically need specialist software to view and formatting them for printing can be a challenge. Ask any experienced project manager if they have had a frustrating meeting with a stakeholder or executive because the Gantt chart was not understood and they will nod – before coming up with several examples.
Gantt charts are great tools, but if you need a simpler way to communicate the project to stakeholders, how else can you display that information?
A Task List
The task list generally forms the left-hand column of a Gantt chart. If the bars themselves prove to be distracting, you can display (or print) just the task list and any additional columns such as start date, end date and resource name.
Alternatively, you could copy and paste this into another format, such as a table in a document or as part of a spreadsheet. If you copy and paste you are likely to lose any task hierarchy, so all the tasks you have neatly grouped together and indented on your Gantt chart will just appear as a list. It might be more effective – depending on your audience – to type out a task list focusing on the information that the stakeholders require.
Task lists can also incorporate a column to tick off when the task is completed. This is particularly helpful if your schedule is for a team member’s benefit and they want to be able to use it to track their own involvement in the project and make sure they complete their tasks on time.
A Network Diagram
Network diagrams show the logical flow through a project. Each activity gets its own box, and lines join the boxes together showing the sequential nature of the tasks. These can be easier for project team members and stakeholders to understand as many people have worked with flow diagrams or process maps before.
A network diagram shows the task name and an ID number, start date, finish date and the duration of the task. You could add more to this, such as the name of the person leading on that task, but don’t make the boxes too big.
Network diagrams work best when the tasks are displayed at a high level and there is a sequential flow of activity without too much happening in parallel strands. The more boxes and arrows you have (and the more information in the box) the busier and more complicated your diagram.
A Simplified Gantt Chart
You can create your own Gantt charts in spreadsheet packages. It is time consuming and will not show the dependencies between tasks in a streamlined way, but many project team members and stakeholders are far more comfortable working in solutions like Microsoft Excel.
The first column becomes a task list and subsequent columns represent dates. At this level, one column equalling one month is probably adequate. You could break that down further if you need more granularity in the timescales. Then just fill in the cells with a color to represent activity.
You could choose different colors for different workstreams or resources, although avoid making it look too garish! Add a key at the bottom so you remember what the colors stand for.
Management Reports From Your Enterprise Project Management Tool
Many enterprise project management solutions include a range of reports. Once you have configured the tool, you can generate reports in a number of formats. These can often be tailored specifically to the needs of stakeholders, so you could use the system functionality to output Gantt chart data in a graphical or tabular format that meets the needs of the stakeholders. You could even set up dashboards with the key information tracked and managed in a transparent way, or export data into a tool like Microsoft Excel.
The great thing about this type of report is that once it is set up, it’s there permanently. You don’t have to update a spreadsheet or generate a new view of your Gantt chart. Just hit the button and run the report. Pre-configured reports can be set up to run automatically, and you can even set up versions for different stakeholder groups. Every time a stakeholder comments on the report or wants more information, you can tweak your enterprise project management tool to generate the output in an appropriate fashion.
Gantt charts are great tools for project managers, but often, project stakeholders and team members need to see project information in a way that makes sense to them. There are alternatives to the Gantt chart: you just need to find something that works for your team.