Gantt Chart

What exactly is a Gantt chart?

People have always wondered what a Gantt chart is and what reference a Gantt chart has in the operations management? A Gantt chart is like a time table, or rather a timeline that you plan to help you get the task completed. Like for instance your planning on manufacturing a new item, so the first step would be a research stage, followed by the manufacturing and selling stage. So as soon as you initiate a plan you estimate a total duration the product will take to come to the market. So in such a situation a Gantt chart will guide you better in sticking with your plan and proceeding in the right direction.

Some of the advantages of using Gantt chart are:

• It is like a timeline, so it will help you plan accordingly what is the duration you will be expected to spend in each and every stage. So proper planning is been made and corresponding action is taken.
• A proper work breakdown structure is been established.
• Gantt charts are very useful for small projects

Some of the limitations of using Gantt charts are:

• The Gantt chart can be easily understood for small projects, but when you make Gantt charts for large number of activities then it becomes impossible to be interpreted clearly.
• A Gantt chart represents only part of the triple constraints, and they are time, scope and cost.
• Listing huge number of dependencies can create a clustered Gantt chart, which will not look good and the observer will not understand any information from the Gantt chart.

Gantt chart has become a very common feature in the web based applications, and the charts when used for smaller scale projects will give additional and needed information as to what is really expected within a frame of time. And when all are working for a common goal, the final product is derived with the quality that is expected. So in a way Gantt chart helps in understanding the position the organization or the project is in now and how the project is expected to go during duration of time.

Questions:

• What are the benefits of using Gantt charts?
• What are the limitations of Gantt charts?