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What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management, is one of the
most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed
against time. On the left of the chart is a list of the activities and along
the top is a suitable time scale. Each activity is represented by a bar; the
position and length of the bar reflects the start date, duration and end date
of the activity. This allows you to see at a glance:
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What the various activities are
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When each activity begins and ends
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How long each activity is scheduled to last
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Where activities overlap with other activities,and by how much
v
The start and end date of the whole project
To summarize, a Gantt
chart shows you what has to be done (the activities) and when (the schedule).
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Part of a more advanced Gantt chart
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The first known tool
of this type was developed in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, who called it a harmonogram. Adamiecki
did not publish his chart until 1931, however, and only in Polish, which
limited both its adoption and recognition of his authorship. The chart is named
after Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed his chart around the years
1910–1915.
One of the first major applications of Gantt charts was by the United States during World War I, at the instigation of General William Crozier. Originally Gantt charts were prepared laboriously by hand; each time a project changed it was necessary to amend and redraw the chart and this limited their usefulness, continual change being a feature of most projects.
One of the first major applications of Gantt charts was by the United States during World War I, at the instigation of General William Crozier. Originally Gantt charts were prepared laboriously by hand; each time a project changed it was necessary to amend and redraw the chart and this limited their usefulness, continual change being a feature of most projects.
In the 1980s, personal
computers allowed for widespread creation of complex and elaborate Gantt
charts. The first desktop applications were intended mainly for project
managers and project schedulers. With the advent of the Internet and increased
collaboration over networks at the end of the 1990s, Gantt charts became a
common feature of web-based applications, including collaborative groupware.
Nowadays, however, with the advent of computers and project management software, Gantt charts can be created, updated and printed easily. Gantt charts are most commonly used for tracking project schedules. For this it is useful to be able to show additional information about the various tasks or phases of the project, for example how the tasks relate to each other, how far each task has progressed, what resources are being used for each task and so on.
References:
Los Ingenieros, loosely translated into The Engineers (from Spanish), is a group consisting of three students from Section 46 of Technical Writing subject, namely Adrian Savari Thomas, Dennis Daniel Lopez and Tillak R Chandra Mohan.
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