What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management, is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time. Gantt charts make it easy to visualize project management timelines by transforming task names, start dates, durations, and end dates into cascading horizontal bar charts.On the left of the chart is a list of the activities and along the top is a suitable time scale. Each activity is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflects the start date, duration and end date of the activity. This allows you to see at a glance:
- What the various activities are
- When each activity begins and ends
- How long each activity is scheduled to last
- Where activities overlap with other activities, and by how much
- The start and end date of the whole project
Gantt Chart History
The first Gantt chart was devised in the mid 1890s by Karol Adamiecki, a Polish engineer who ran a steelworks in southern Poland and had become interested in management ideas and techniques. Some 15 years after Adamiecki , Henry Gantt, an American engineer and management consultant, devised his own version of the chart and it was this that became widely known and popular in western countries. Consequently it was Henry Gantt whose name was to become associated with charts of this type.
 Karol Adamiecki |  Henry Gantt | |
Originally Gantt charts were prepared laboriously by hand; each time a project changed it was necessary to amend or redraw the chart and this limited their usefulness, continual change being a feature of most projects. Nowadays, however, with the advent of computers and project management software, Gantt charts can be created, updated and printed easily.
Today, Gantt charts are most commonly used for tracking project schedules. For this it is useful to be able to show additional information about the various tasks or phases of the project, for example how the tasks relate to each other, how far each task has progressed, what resources are being used for each task and so on.
When you set up a Gantt chart, you need to think through all of the tasks involved in your project. As part of this process, you'll work out who will be responsible for each task, how long each task will take, and what problems your team may encounter.
This detailed thinking helps you ensure that the schedule is workable, that the right people are assigned to each task, and that you have workarounds for potential problems before you start.
They also help you work out practical aspects of a project, such as the minimum time it will take to deliver, and which tasks need to be completed before others can start. Plus, you can use them to identify the critical path – the sequence of tasks that must individually be completed on time if the whole project is to deliver on time.
Finally, you can use them to keep your team and your sponsors informed of progress. Simply update the chart to show schedule changes and their implications, or use it to communicate that key tasks have been completed.
Step-by-Step Instructions for Making a
Gantt Chart in Excel
1. Create a Task Table
List each task in your project in start date order from beginning to end. Include the task name, start date, duration, and end date. Make your list as complete as possible. Because of Excel's limitations, adding steps or extending out may force you to reformat your entire chart.
2. Build a Bar Chart
On the top menu, select Insert, and then click on the Bar chart icon. When the drop-down menu appears, choose the flat Stacked Bar Chart, highlighted in green below. This will insert a blank chart onto your spreadsheet.
3. Format Your Gantt Chart
What you have is a stacked bar chart. The starting dates are blue and the durations are orange. Notice your tasks are in reverse order. To fix this, click on the list of tasks to select them, then right click over the list and choose Format Axis. Select the checkbox Categories in reverse order and Close.
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