Redesigning the Gantt chart
Visualization of work and time in 2016
It’s been more than 100 years since the invention of the Gantt chart, and the workforce has changed dramatically since then.
As technology improves and the communication gap between different cultures and countries shrinks, more and more businesses are turning to highly skilled, remote workers for help. 37 percent of U.S. workers say that they now telecommute at least two days a month, up from 30 percent who did so during the last decade.
The way we interact with information has changed as well, as smaller, more powerful devices now occupy our desks and pockets. Screen resolutions have reached Retina™ levels, and alongside the keyboard, touchscreens and trackpads with gesture-based inputs are now the norm.
The popularity of cloud-based computing has changed the face of software development, enabling the delivery of frequent, continuous, improvements and upgrades. Project management methodologies have evolved to fit this new reality, with the introduction of agile methods and lean principles.
What do these changes mean for the humble Gantt chart? Before we get to that, let’s first take a look back.
Measuring productivity: A short history.
Henry Gantt invented the Gantt Progress Chart in the early 20th century. He was a management consultant guru at the time, spending his days analyzing the effective utilization of labour and comparing what was promised with what was actually performed.
The Gantt chart was considered unique for its day as it displayed both completed work and work to be completed — together — in relation to each other across equal divisions of time. The charts were never static, simultaneously measuring past work and predicting future performance. This distinct advantage quickly elevated the Gantt chart from quirky industrial plant tool, to a popular war-time production planner.
Throughout the late 1900’s, the Gantt chart was instrumental across almost all large scale constructions, including the (on-budget, on-time!) production of the Hoover Dam in ‘36. It was also a staple of the automotive industry, and you would have been hard pressed not to find one hanging on the walls of any Ford factory. It’s widespread use and success propelled Gantt into project management folklore.
Across the Pacific, post-World War II, there was another major shift in production planning efficiency. This time, it was with the help of an industrial innovator named Taiichi Ohn.
Taiichi was a Japanese engineer tasked with solving production issues that were hampering Toyota in the struggle against its Detroit competitors. Taking cues from how US supermarkets operated, both in efficiency and inventory methods, Taiichi invented the Toyota Production System (TPS) and Kanban, the just-in-time production delivery method.
This system flipped the script on traditional production methods. Rather than stockpiling large quantities of parts ahead of time, materials were supplied as needed to the factory floor. When these parts were exhausted, a physical Kanban card would document the requirements and be passed along to the warehouse to restock as production continued. Toyota repositioned their factory workplace around this method, which led to faster production times, lower inventory and a competitive advantage over their US rivals.
It was these unique Kanban cards and the practice of visualizing requirements, which would later find a home in the era of software development.
Hello computer.
While the 1970’s were reserved for computers the size of most New York apartments, it was in 1980 — a year after the launch of the Apple II — that we got our first glimpse of a desktop computer scheduling interface, the Micro Planner V1.0. The proliferation of cheap PCs in the late 80’s proved crucial to the migration from manual project planning into the digital era. By the end of the decade, anyone with a basic computer had access to a treasure trove of applications that could help them visualize and plan their work. A whole new world of scheduling possibilities was realized.
The Internet era.
In the late 1990’s, ASPs (Application Service Providers) began managing applications for businesses, centralizing hosting and providing dramatic cost efficiencies. It was this model that paved the way for the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) revolution of the early 2000s.
SaaS proved a clear winner for businesses. Accessing software in a browser via a paid subscription required very little technical know-how, avoided expensive upfront fees, upgrades and complex local hosting setups. Vendors also loved it, providing a cost-effective platform for development and continuous improvement.
Software development methods evolved in parallel. The age-old, sequential, waterfall process would be superseded by iterative, incremental, agile methods. Kickstarted by 2001’s Agile Manifesto, rocket fuel was applied in 2008 with the introduction of the Lean Startup method of product development by Eric Ries. No longer were teams betting the bank on a single end-solution, instead applying a build-measure-learn approach to deliver Minimal Viable Products (MVP) efficiently and cost-effectively.
As a result, the 2000’s saw an explosion in project planning applications, and with it, all new ways to visualize data.
Designing the modern day Gantt: The brief
In 2010, after more than a decade of managing teams and their times across agencies, studios and firms, our team came to the conclusion that the area of forecasting was under-serviced. Advances in technology and process hadn’t yet made their way to addressing the question of who was working on what and when.
Taking on the challenge of building a time planning tool for the modern workplace, we set about defining the design principles. The solution must be:
- Visual: As Gantt achieved with his charts 100 years ago, a schedule must provide at-a-glance feedback on work over time.
- Adaptive: The schedule must be fast and flexible, adaptable to change with the ease of a Kanban board.
- Responsive: The solution must adapt to the screen it’s displayed on, from desktop to mobile.
- Flexible: Work days and hours must be flexible to reflect the modern day team.
- Alive: A schedule must always be up-to-date, no matter where you are in the world, displaying live changes as they occur.
The solution.
In 2012 we launched Float, a simple, modern solution for managing your team’s time.
The ‘MVP’ focused on the fundamentals of time tracking, drawing upon the core aspects of Gantt’s Man Record Chart:
- listing resources down the left column,
- displaying equally divisible time across the horizontal axis and
- visualizing work allocations, both in line weight (hours per day) and length (duration)
The chart would provide at-a-glance visual feedback on a team’s allocations and progress.
Over the course of the year we delivered adaptive features; flexible tools to address change in the forecasted schedule. This included tools to drag, drop, duplicate, insert, replace and split tasks in seconds.
By 2014, the application would be one of the first SaaS solutions to be fully-responsive. All pages could be viewed on any device.
In 2015, we addressed the need for a team member’s capacity to be more flexible, introducing changeable work hours by individual.
This year we introduced live schedule updates. For the first time, teams could collaborate synchronously and the schedule would be alive!
The future of visualizing work and time.
This upcoming year we’ll be delivering improvements across all aspects of Float. We’ll be providing teams with more flexibility into capacity and availability planning. We’ll also be allowing you to integrate Float easier and faster with the other services you use and love.
By implementing the latest in team scheduling technology, businesses can mitigate risks while also ensuring strong collaboration between employees. Our ongoing updates and new features are not window dressing, but a reflection of our commitment to building Float into the most effective productivity tool it can be.
We’re excited about the future of work planning. Recently we’ve seen advancements in virtual reality, pressure sensitive trackpads and keyboards working more harmoniously with tablets like the iPad Pro. We also get a kick out of seeing experiments into planning, like the back-to-the-future Special Project’s Bit Planner.
While it’s difficult to predict which technologies and methods will stick and which will fade into the ether, we’ll continue to evaluate and implement the very best of both.
Looking for a team scheduling solution for today and into the future?
Start a free 30 day trial with Float. www.float.com
Thanks to Michael Freedman for the edits and additions.
