About Gantt Charts

Ever since Henry Laurence Gantt introduced the Gantt chart, it has become widely used as a common charting technique for monitoring the progress of projects.  A Gantt chart is a graphical representation of the various activities in a project and matched against the progression of time. A picture clearly shows the activities against time in an elegant fashion.

A Gantt chart is useful in scheduling projects. A Gantt chart is similar to a worksheet or a graphing paper with rows for the activities and units of time for the columns. In setting up a project, you define in a working paper the list of activities that need to be done to accomplish the project. It is difficult to define the activities in an orderly fashion at the onset so the work may need several iterations to get the list of activities right. You may have to regroup and reclassify tasks and activities to get a complete picture of the project. This is referred to as the WBS or work breakdown structure which normally precedes the development of a Gantt chart. Once you have all the necessary activities, sequencing them is possible if the activities logically follow each other. There are instances when activities may overlap or be interrelated to one another. Early project managers would handle those situations by placing notations or footers in the relevant activities to keep track of interrelationships. Once you have the activities in place, you can focus on the columns. Each column should represent a time unit or in some cases a calendar date. For instance, if the time units or columns represented weeks, each column would represent 1 week of time. If the project is set for completion in 1 year, there would be a corresponding 52 columns to represent the number of weeks in the year.

Once the Gantt chart is set up with the appropriate tasks and the columns have been marked with the proper time units, it becomes a case of shading the portions of the time units that apply to when the activity will start and end. For instance, if the activity is planned to start on week 4 and end on week 7, the columns representing weeks 4 through 7 would be shaded to indicate the start and end of the activity. In this fashion, the planned activities and schedules are documented on the Gantt chart. However, in the real world, it is very common that the actual situation does not conform to the plans. Project managers would take a snapshot of where they are in the project and update the Gantt chart accordingly for presentation and discussion with other team members and management. It is not uncommon that people lose track of what the original plan was as they focus on the present status of the project. The sad thing about losing track of the original plan is that nobody realizes the impact and repercussions of the readjusted deadlines. They think the project is still on track and progressing as scheduled, not realizing that deadlines have moved. One way of keeping abreast of the current plan is to reflect the current plan and the actual progress on the same Gantt chart. You can have two different color shades to show the difference between planned and actual. This is good if there are few adjustments on the project but if the project undergoes several radical changes in schedules, the color codes might be spread all over the chart and become more confusing to the reader.

As time went on, managers and information technology developers tried to enhance the Gantt chart. Dependencies were shown with dotted lines. The project management software was able to provide an updated Gantt chart almost at an instant's notice. Delays or late activities could be highlighted for investigation. The Gantt chart remains an active project management tool to this date.

Related : Mascara & Eyelash We Review It !!! Civil Engineers

PowerPoint Tip - Create Effective Graphs & Charts

Graphs (called charts in PowerPoint) are an important part of many presentations, especially ones with financial data. In this tip, I include the basics for creating a readable, effective graph.

For a special technique, read another tip, " Push PowerPoint charting options to the limit."

First, some basic steps:

1. Make sure that your data is not too complex. Often, you can split one chart into two to make the point more clearly.

2. Choose the right chart type! Data that is appropriate for a column chart doesn't work with a pie chart, and vice versa.

3. It's often useful to add an arrow or callout to the chart to point out important data or trends.

Once you have your chart, know that PowerPoint's default formatting is never acceptable. That's right, never. So you might as well learn how to change the formatting. Here you see the default chart using the blank template.

Here are the problems:

* The 3D effect is confusing. Does the front or the back of the column represent the actual number?

* You don't need the legend on the right, because the title provides the information. The legend also forces the graph to fit into a smaller space.

* The bars help gauge the value, but they're ugly and distracting.

* The bars are too far apart from each other, which makes see the trend more difficult.

* The bars could look more interesting!

Here is one way you could change the chart:

1. Double-click the chart to open it for editing.

2. Choose Chart>Chart Type. Choose the first chart sub-type (a 2D option) and click OK. The actual values are much more apparent now.

3. Click the legend on the right to select it and press Delete. Your graph now takes up the entire chart area.

4. Click one of the gridlines, and press Delete. The background is now uncluttered.

5. Click one of the columns, right-click the column, and choose Format Data Series. Click the Options tab. In the Gap Width text box, reduce the value to 20. The columns are now closer together.

6. Click the Patterns tab. In the Area section, click Fill Effects. On the Gradient tab of the Fill Effects dialog box, Choose the Two Colors option. Click the Color 1 and Color 2 drop-down lists and choose two colors that you like, that match the rest of the presentation, and that go well with each other. I chose Light Turquoise and Teal. In the Shading Styles section, choose Vertical and then choose the variant with the lighter color in the middle. Click OK twice. The columns now have a subtle 3D effect without being confusing.

Here's the final result, with a background applied.

Related : Civil Engineer Civil Engineering Webboard Power Soil Test Drainage Works