Gantt Chart

Gantt chart is a popular type of bar chart. The Gantt chart illustrates the tasks that must be done to complete the project, the time frame they must be completed in, and the team members who are assigned to each task.. Also the Gantt chart did not initially indicate the relationships between activities. In the Gantt chart, each task takes up one of the rows. Dates run along the top in increments of days, weeks or months. Rows of bars in the Gantt chart show the start and finish dates of each task in the project. Tasks may run sequentially, in parallel or overlapping.

Since the initial introduction of Gantt charts, they have become an industry standard as a key project management tool for representing the phases, tasks and activities that are scheduled as part of a project work breakdown structure or timeline of activities.

Gantt charts indicate the exact duration of specific tasks, but they can also be used to indicate:

1 The relationship between tasks

2 Planned and actual completion dates

3 Cost of each task

4 The person or persons responsible for each task

5 The milestones in a project's development

Gantt charts are also used by supervisors and team leaders to schedule team members for various time dependent tasks such as visiting clients, making sales calls, being on medical call, being on guard duty, and more. There are two types of Gantt Charts: Load Charts and Project Planning Charts.