What is a Gantt Chart? A Complete Guide

A Gantt chart is a great tool for task management, project planning, scheduling, and progress tracking.

In case you have questions about these diagrams, here is the complete guide to Gantt charts that covers most of them.

• What is a Gantt chart?
• The history of a Gantt chart.
• What is a Gantt chart used for?
• What information is included in a Gantt chart?
• Example of a Gantt chart.

What is a Gantt chart and why is it important?

A Gantt chart is a bar chart with two axes – a horizontal one and a vertical one. The first one is used to define start and end dates while the latter is used to present tasks.

This diagram shows all your assignments and their dates along a timeline. In other words, it is a clear visually appealing schedule of your and your team tasks and dates that can be connected to each other.

As you see, with a Gantt chart, you will know what work has to be done, current work as well as what has already been accomplished. It also helps keep track of the progress of your plan or project and be aware of all the deadlines in advance.

The history of a Gantt chart

The “Gantt” in this expression stands for the last name of its creator – Henry Gantt, an?American mechanical engineer, and management consultant. He designed a diagram and further published articles about his invention in 1910 and 1915. At that time, those charts were completely novel.

Surprisingly, but a diagram itself was introduced even earlier, in 1896, by Karol Adamiecki, a?Polish economist, engineer, and management researcher. However, he only managed to publish his first work in 1909. Later on, in 1931, he published a more widely known article where he described the harmonogram – he called the chart like this.

The reason why the Gantt chart is named after the American engineer and not the Polish one is quite obvious. Henry Gantt spoke and wrote in English, while Karol Adamiecki published his articles in Polish and Russian.

The history of a Gantt chart in a few dates:

• 1896: Karol Adamiecki designs a means of displaying interdependent processes. He calls it a harmonogram.
• 1903: Henry Gantt defines a chart to increase the visibility of production schedules.
• 1903: Adamiecki’s invention causes a stir in technical circles in Russia.
• 1909: Adamiecki publishes some articles in Polish describing the diagram.
• 1910-1915: Henry Gantt further develops the diagram, publishes articles describing them, and popularizes them.
• 1931: Adamiecki publishes his more known article about the harmonogram in Polish and Russian.
• Today: a Gantt chart is one of the most popular tools in project management.

What is a Gantt chart used for?

A Gantt chart is used to cover several project management issues. However, one of them is fundamental.

The purpose of a Gantt chart is scheduling

With its help, you can easily schedule every phase of a plan regardless of its duration with clearly defined start and end dates.

In addition, a Gantt chart helps identify milestones – significant events in your projects with no duration – and deadlines.?Don’t want to miss a date? The Gantt diagram is your solution!

With the advance of online Gantt chart tool, the chart becomes a handler in other situations. In particular, it helps manage resources, cost, and collaborate between team members.

Put it shortly, a Gantt chart is used for:

• Task scheduling.
• Identifying milestones.
• Keeping track of deadlines.
• Keeping track of progress.
• Connecting tasks with dependencies.
• Collaboration.
• Resource management.
• Cost management.

What information is included in a Gantt chart?

A typical Gantt chart should include the following information:

• Tasks, their duration, status, and priority.
• Start and end dates.
• Progress.
• Timeline with the time scale.
• Milestones.
• Dependencies between tasks.
• Deadlines.
• Critical path.

A robust Gantt chart tool that is able to cover most of the needs of project managers will also include:

• Assignees.
• Estimations.
• Resource workload: who works on what tasks, who is overloaded, who can be given more tasks.
• Costs.
• Options that allow customizing plans.
• Comments, attachments, notifications for teamwork.
• Baselines.
• Templates.
• Auto scheduling.

So,?if you need an answer to the question “What are the main features of a Gantt chart?”, just look above – these features help build solid projects and organize all the teamwork.

Example of a Gantt chart

Here is how GanttPRO?online Gantt chart maker?– one of the most robust and intuitive tools in the market and a perfect example of the diagram – looks like.

In GanttPRO as well as in some other tools you will find lots of?Gantt chart examples?for different spheres.

Would you like to get more details about this amazing project management tool and the best way to create it?

To learn more, read our full article about a Gantt?chart https://blog.ganttpro.com/en/ultimate-guide-gantt-charts/

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