Gantt charts are one of the most popular collaboration tools used in project management. But can you believe that the Gantt chart predates modern project management tools by almost a century? It was first invented in the early 1910s by Henry Gantt. It was considered a revolutionary tool back then and continues to hold on to its popularity for self-evident reasons.
They’re easy to understand, allow for real-time updates, and promotes collaboration at all levels. With every decade that passes, technology has only made it more effective and easier to use. Here are some reasons why Gantt charts are here to stay and how it helps make project management more efficient.
Benefits of team collaboration software
Gantt charts are an absolute necessity when you’re managing a remote team. It’s one of the best team collaboration tools around and if the past few years has taught us anything, it’s to have an established remote working culture. We live in what will be marked in history as the COVID era. Remote work is the norm and managing projects has vastly changed given the changing work landscape.
Unlike your physical offices, where you can drop into your team member’s cabin at any time and get an update, you need different methods and technological assistance to stay connected.
According to a survey conducted with 400 companies and a total of 100,000 employees, it was found that inadequate communication could cost the company an average loss of $62.4 million per year. The survey was rightly named, ‘The cost of poor communications.’
Here are some more stats that highlight the importance of collaboration for the smooth functioning of a team:
- 88% of remote workers reportedly come across inconsistent leadership and miscommunication issues with other team members
- 83% of employees agreed that too many emails burnt them out
- COVID-19 has increased employee burnout by 12% in two months, with 20% of employees citing high workload as the number-one cause of burnout
How can these problems be solved? You need well-defined work policies that factor in the new challenges that remote work produces, and you need better software tools to assist in implementing these work policies.
Now let’s see how Gantt charts can help solve your collaboration problems.
Read on: Remote company 101: the starter pack.
What’s a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart visually represents your project schedule, assignments, tasks, task dependencies, timeline, task status, milestones, and more. It’s a horizontal bar chart that quickly shows everything you need to know about your project progress and schedule.
Gantt charts are beneficial in a multitude of ways:
- Efficient and flexible project scheduling
- Better sprint planning and task management
- Define critical paths and manage project timelines
- Helps you improve accountability
- Promotes collaboration and provides a transparent view of the project in real time
- Ensures better resource usage
Areas where Gantt charts can be used
As mentioned earlier, Gantt charts find application in a wide range of spaces and can be effectively used in several areas of project management.
Software development
Gantt charts play a critical part in implementing the agile method and help track agile metrics efficiently.
Marketing
Marketing campaigns usually run on a tight schedule, and a Gantt chart can be of huge help in ensuring these teams stay on schedule. It helps marketing agencies make quick campaign plans. You can allocate people, add deadlines, dependencies, and notes so that you know exactly what needs to be done and in which order. In addition to the Gantt chart, every campaign can also have a task board so that you can distribute tasks amongst your team.
It highlights the activities that are required to be completed in a fixed period. Thus, it helps track the project schedules. The chart shows tasks on the vertical axis whilst the horizontal axis represents the time span of the project.
Construction
Time is of the essence when it comes to construction projects. Every extra minute spent adds to labor, maintenance, and legal costs. Gantt charts have long been used in the construction space. As construction projects involve financing, Gantt charts are also used as a means to document expenses.
Consulting agencies
A single miscommunication can result in consulting agencies finding themselves in a huge mess as they handle multiple projects and clients simultaneously. Say for instance, what happens when the same service agent is assigned to two critical tasks that overlap in a timeline. A Gantt chart helps solve such issues by providing a clear-cut view of the various pipeline tasks currently in progress, estimated time, task dependencies, and assignments in real-time. You can also make use of auto-scheduling and adjustments to reflect the real-time updates happening across your projects.
Design and creativity
Whether you have an individual creative project or you’re working as a team, a Gantt chart could come in handy to help you keep track of all your tasks. The creative process in design industries can be exhausting and time-consuming. Missing crucial deadlines is one of the major reasons behind an innovative project’s failure. Gantt charts can help make it more efficient by breaking down your tasks into individual units, assigning critical paths, and ensuring you don't fall too far behind your project deadlines.
The best thing about Gantt charts is that you don't have to have any technical knowledge or go through a steep learning curve to start using them. They’re one of the easiest project management tools to use and only take a few minutes to get used to.
Manufacturing
The manufacturing processes often follow a rigid sequence: product design, procuring raw materials, machinery, setting up the tools, manufacturing, testing, packaging, delivery, and aftercare service. In addition, some processes may also include recycling as part of their manufacturing cycle. Since the manufacturing industry follows a strict template for its processes, Gantt charts can be readily used for these projects.
Gantt charts can effectively communicate all the information regarding the manufacturing process and help you see gaps and optimize the process. It helps optimize usage of manufacturing resources and finds ways to prevent shortages and overflows.
Human resources
The human resources department can use HR Gantt chart templates to track their tasks, projects, and task assignments. Gantt charts can also be used to organize HR activities and inform concerned employees of the progress.
They’re hugely helpful in resource allocation. As Gantt charts understand the project's timeline, HR can use them to determine how many resources will be required and can allocate the necessary budget and resources for the project. They can also help track the time spent on each task which’ll help accurately track the billable hours of each resource.
Event planning
Whether you’re a professional event planner or not, you’ll be able to see how much a Gantt chart can help you plan a successful event. By using an event planning Gantt chart, you can easily define the checklist of items and tasks that need to be done.
You can keep track of each task relevant to the event and get in touch with your fellow event planners to make the necessary adjustments if things aren’t going as planned. Gantt charts make it easy to share event plans amongst your team and get everyone on board. You can also ensure that all stages of your event plan, from planning, promotion, execution, to wrap-up, are appropriately handled and tracked.
Your turn
As you can see, Gantt charts can be used in a range of industries. So in addition to helping you collaborate effectively, it also boosts your productivity. If you’re still looking for a powerful Gantt chart tool, look no further. Vault can provide you with handy features that can be linked to these charts and used to work smarter, not harder. Contact us and we’ll tell you more.
