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What is a Gantt chart?

People have been planning, scheduling and controlling projects for quite a few years (for example the Pyramids and Stone Henge).

A standard technique employed in recent times to keep track of a project's progress is the Gantt chart named after the industrial engineer Henry Gantt (1861-1919). They are easy to draw (especially using Excel), easy to understand and readily adaptable to other planning approaches (eg. Critical Path analysis).

As seen below (produced using ProjeX) this type of chart shows the start and end of a number of tasks and shows their timing relationship relative to each other.

The bar for each task stretches from the starting date of the task to the end of the task. The bars can be color coded to show if the task is running behind schedule or based on resources required for the task.

Download the freeware version of ProjeX and have a play with Gantt charts now.