5 Advantages of Using Gantt Charts in Project Management
Gantt charts are a vital data visualization tool in modern project management that helps to perform different functions. Project managers use them to visualize high-level roadmaps, to plan simple and complex projects, to schedule resources and more.
The popularity of Gantt charts has led to the development of various Gantt chart-based project management platforms. Their functionality and pricing vary significantly.
Popular Gantt charts have a rather interesting historical background and people often think that Henry Gantt was the one who first had the idea of project planning on these beautiful bar charts. However, it’s not really. The details are described in the article How Do Gantt Charts Make Project Managers’ Life Easier?
How do Gantt charts help project managers to succeed? What are the key advantages of Gantt charts software for business? Spend 5 minutes to delve into details!
Why do we need Gantt charts in project management?
Any Gantt chart service should enable project managers and their teams to perform the following functions:
- Project planning. The visualization with the help of Gantt charts helps to plot all tasks, phases, and milestones against the schedule. You may set benchmarks for scope, time and budget, identify requirements, divide them into deliverables or milestones, estimate resources and time.
- Project tracking. The charts assist you in tracking the progression of work items after kickoff, monitoring at-risk tasks and any deviations from the schedule.
- Task management. With the help of Gantt charts, your users will be alerted to new assignments and will view a to-do list with their assigned tasks with start and due dates.
- Resource management. You may easily assign tasks to users, avoid scheduling conflicts and see relevant and available users.
- Collaboration. Project managers can be sure that they centralize project requirements and participants and that their users are working off of the same knowledge base.
5 advantages of using Gantt charts for project managers
1. Ability to manage complex info
With the help of Gantt charts, you can easily scan critical project information. Thanks to the charts, our users will know at a glance who on the team is going to complete the task, when he/she is going to complete it, how this task relates to the entire project.
Tasks that are displayed as horizontal lines span certain portions of the timeline. They have different colors to represent the employee or dept they’re assigned to.
2. Increasing team productivity
The info about task progress in Gantt Chart tools is shown publicly. It helps people to stay on top of their own work and allows all team members to hold each other accountable.
After the starting of a project, Gantt charts may display progress in the following ways:
- Your task will be shaded. Users will need to hover over or click on the task to view its details.
- Some services allow scheduling email or in-app alerts when a task is nearing its due date.
3. Advanced resource planning
Planning and scheduling become more effective if use Gantt charts. Project managers visualize their resource capacity and this allows them to allocate people to projects correctly so key resources don’t become overworked. It’s shown on the example below — on Hygger roadmap.
With Gantt charts, managers see both current and future project schedules. They can split work more efficiently and evenly across team members and employees.
A Gantt chart is not a panacea for successful planning, however, project management platforms that include Gantt charts offer resource management functionality and the visual project plan, providing managers with additional insight into employee availability and utility.
4. Same page for the different groups
Do you want to keep different groups on the same page? Gantt charts assist to do it by combining disparate project information into one tool. They also make it easy to share this info among stakeholders.
In fact, the charts summarize complex project info for a different audience and display them only the data that is most important to them.
5. Clear project requirements
With the help of calendar view, Gantt diagrams clarify project and team requirements. It helps to highlight milestones, dependencies, and potential risk areas.
It means that Gantt chart software helps all employees involved to better understand their responsibilities and how their tasks relate to the project (as the tasks are displayed across the calendar).
This is one of the main reasons why modern product roadmaps are so popular. They help to measure how much effort is required from each member or each dept. Moreover, it allows stakeholders and managers to more accurately define the project’s scope, time and budget.
How to choose the best automated Gantt chart app?
As you can see from the pictures above, different services and companies propose different tools with Gantt chart functionality.
In fact, available standalone Gantt chart tools are one of the most popular methods for users. You may easily build a chart using Excel. It’s clearly described in the Ultimate Guide to Gantt Charts.
Free downloadable apps or free versions of paid tools offer initial functionality, while paid products provide you with more capabilities and support options than you have with free platforms.
Anyway, if you have enough time and opportunities to choose, then you will be able to test many Gantt chart apps and tools and find the most convenient and functional service right for you and your team. It’s worth it!
