The Usefulness of Gantt Charts in Project Management

A Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a bar chart that is designed to give an illustration of the project schedule. The chart provides a list of the tasks that should be performed on the vertical axis, while the intervals of time are shown on the horizontal axis (Harrison & Lock, 2017). The chart is useful in illustrating the duration of each activity, which is determined by the length of the horizontal bars. Gantt charts are also helpful in project management as they show the time when a specific event starts and when it ends (Schwalbe, 2015). Consequently, the chart has the terminal and summary elements, which constitute the work breakdown structure.

Work Breakdown Structure

The work breakdown structure of a project is an important deliverable used in organizing the tasks of teams into manageable sections. It comprises of the elements formed when the entire scope of the project is decomposed in a hierarchical order (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The primary reason for decomposing the range into smaller components is to ensure that the work of the teams is organized into manageable levels. Additionally, the WBS provides the vital framework for detailed estimation of the cost and control as well as giving guidance for the development of the schedule.

Project Planning

Project planning is a process of project management, which uses vital tools of the project to plan and report the progression of the project (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Initially, the scope of the project was identified as the appropriate method for the completion of a project. However, project planning has become the best process that project managers use in organizing the project deliverables using tools such as the schedules and the Gantt charts (Harrison & Lock, 2017). The outstanding feature about project planning is that the timing of the project can be optimized to achieve the required correlation between the consumption of resources and the timelines to comply with the set objectives (Schwalbe, 2015). Therefore, the process of project planning directly affects the outcomes of the project.

References

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.