Effective Project Management Tools
GANTT CHART
why is it used
The process of creating a Gantt chart allows you to think about all the tasks that are involved when running your project. You will also identify who will be responsible for each task, how long each task will take and any problems that you and your team can encounter.
when should it be used
You should design your Gantt chart in the beginning of your project, after listing your activities and dependencies. Therefore, you can sort your activities out by date order. You can constantly update your Gantt chart during your project if any un expected problems or activities arise.
How to create and use Gantt Charts (Excel-Mac)
Step 1
Creating the Worksheet
The first step of creating a Gantt chart is to make your worksheet on excel with the following columns (Task name, start date, end date, duration). The task name column should be formatted as a text, the start date/end date as a short date and Duration as numbers.
STEP 1 (cont.)
The Worksheet
To get excel calculate the duration automatically, you can use a simple formula inserted into the cell. As you can see above this can be (=C2-B2). After this you can copy the cell and paste it into the remaining cells in the duration column.
STEP 2
Formatting Cells & Graphs
The next step is to select the stacked bar chart that can be found in the insert tab. Insert the chart anywhere in the worksheet where you have space, and after this you will need to right click and click select data to insert data.
Whilst this is one on a mac, the process should look similar on a pc. Click on the plus symbol under the Legend entries section. This adds the first data set. We will add the start date section first so we will name it start date and click inside the Y values field
The first step of the process involves gathering all the people who are, or may have any interest in your project. Put together a small brainstorm with all the short term and long term stakeholder towards your certain project. It is best to do this stage alongside other team members to really try to nail down all possible stakeholders.
After clicking on the Y value field, you will select all the cells in the Start date column to select the data which will be inserted into the stacked bar chart. You will do this process again for the Duration data set.
The last step is to select the data source in the horizontal axis label and select the entire task column.
Make sure you click the “show data in hidden rows and columns” and click OK.
After following all these steps, your bar chart should look like this.
Step 3
Further Formatting & Data Manipulation
Now you can see that it is starting to look more like a Gantt Chart. However, as you can see there is still some aspects of the stacked bar chart that we need to edit. The first problem is that the Dates are stored as numbers as that’s how Excel sees them.
The first thing you want to do is get rid of the extra time that the chart covers by default. All you need to do first is to copy the first start date into another cell and re-format it into a number instead. You should then see the number which resembles the date you are working with.
As you can see the date 29/11/2016 is 42703.00 when Excel reads it. Once you have the start date number right click on the horizontal axis of the bar chart and select ‘format axis’.
Input the number you just got from re formatting the date into a number in the Minimum Bounds field. In this case its 42703.00.
We also do not have readable dates so you need to click on the horizontal axis and select format axis. Scroll down to Numbers and change the category field to date from general. Your bar chart should now have readable dates.
If you look at your bar chart you can see that the tasks are in reverse order, to change this all you need to do is right click the vertical axis and select the categories in reverse order box shown in the diagram.
To make this bar chart look like a Gantt Chart what you must do next is click on one of the blue bars, this will select all of them. Next you select the paint bucket tool and click on no fill. This will get rid of the blue bars on your chart making it look like a real Gantt chart. Your bar chart will now look like a Gantt chart.
Step 4
Sharpen up with a Bit of Colour
Finally, we have reached a point where your Gantt Chart needs to be edited by changing the colour of each bar. By doing so you can see who is responsible for completing each task, making it easier for you to manage the project start to finish.
All you need to do is double click on each bar and select a different colour from the paint bucket tool.
