Why do you need a Gantt chart application?
Project management is not an easy thing. You are constantly torn between projects, multiple tasks, people, and whatnot. In case you miss a deadline, all the planning might go haywire. And what is even worse you may have serious repercussions. A visual overview of a project is sure to be extremely helpful there. That is what the Gantt chart application is necessary for.
Actually, people from all walks of life, not only project managers, are now using Gantt charts to plan, organize, and deliver. Everyone can benefit from using them.
What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a very popular and useful way to show different tasks and events displayed against time. The list of the activities is located on the left of the chart. The time scale is along the top. All activities are represented by special bars. So that the length of the bar reflects duration, and position shows the start date and due date of the activity. All this allows you to see just at a glance:
- What exactly activities you have ahead
- When each activity should start and end
- How long each activity is planned to last
- Where different activities overlap, and by how much
- The whole project start and due dates
To sum up, a well-composed Gantt chart shows when you have to do something and what it must be. That’s why Gantt charts are perfect allies for planning, scheduling, and managing projects.
Gantt Chart History
The origin of the idea dates back to the mid-1890s when Polish engineer Karol Adamiecki invented a diagram and called it harmonograph. He did it to improve the way production schedules were displayed at that time. The only problem was that his ideas were published in Polish and Russian only.
Henry Laurence Gantt is an American engineer and project management consultant. Some 15 years later, he also worked on similar problems and designed his own version of the chart. His version became widely known and very popular in western countries. That’s why Henry Gantt’s name became associated with charts of this type.
Originally Gantt charts were made laboriously by hand. It took quite a lot of time. One more bad thing was that each time a project changed it was difficult to amend the chart and quite often it was necessary to redraw it. Sure this limited chart’s usefulness as a continual change is a feature of most projects. However now, with the advent of computers and Gantt chart application development, you can create, update, and print a chart effortlessly.
Why a Gantt chart application is that useful?
Sure you are eager to know why Gantt chart apps are still used for now and why they are so helpful for leaders. But here you only need to understand that these charts greatly facilitate the planning process. They are really simple to set up, use, and keep track of, therefore they turn out to be of great help for managers.
As nowadays Gantt chart applications are mostly used to track project schedules quite often such applications are able to show additional information about phases and tasks of the project. For example what resources are necessary for each task, how far each task has progressed, how all the tasks are related to each other, and so on.
It gives project managers and project teams the opportunity to understand how long a project should take. With the help of such apps, they can determine the needed resources, grasp the dependencies between the tasks, and outline the right order to complete the tasks to be able to deliver the whole project on time.
Using a Gantt Chart within Kanbanchi
There are tons of Gantt chart apps out there these days. Therefore, you can always find something that is most suitable. However, it may take a lot of time. We advise you not to waste your time and build a Gantt chart for your project using Kanbanchi right now.
A simple and intuitive user interface will allow you to quickly get used to the application and cope with this task. And the resulting Gantt chart will make your projects simple and clear so you can always be on the right track.
However, this is not all. As you can easily tell from the name of the application, it also contains a Kanban board. Combining two of these critical tools for monitoring and tracking tasks in one application will save you time and allow you to be even more efficient.
For example, you can schedule tasks on a Gantt chart and then just switch to the Kanban board to follow for workflow steps. And additional functions such as Time Tracker, Archive, and several types of Reports will help you to control everything as much as possible.
Find out how much easier and more productive your work and life might be with Kanbanchi.