PROVIDING ACCURATE, RELIABLE AND STRAIGHT TO THE POINT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT DIFFERENT IT TOOLS EXPLAINED WITH PRACTICAL EXAMPLES
GANTT CHART is a special kind of chart which was made for assessing the progress of any task or project. It is extensively used in PROJECT MANAGEMENT.
The GANTT CHART is a kind of bar chart which has a timeline on the top and list of activities on the left. For every activity, a bar is created for the time it took to complete. It helps to track the performance of the project. All the activities have a start date and planned duration. It shows the delay any activity took to begin and how much delay it took after the given time.
The first kind of GANTT CHART was developed by an engineer from the POLAND, Karol Adamiecki. But his work was not published and got known worldwide and was limited to Polish, because of which he could not gain much recognition. The chart he created was called a harmonogram by him.
After this , Hermann Schurch also created something like Gantt charts for his projects. But it also couldn’t get much recognition.
Henry Gantt, an American engineer,designed his version of the chart around 1910 to 1915. His version became very popular in the western countries and was adopted by various projects. So Henry Gantt gained the recognition from these and hence the name GANTT CHARTS. Although the version made by them was very basic, now a days there have been many improvements making them much beneficial now. Just for an exciting information, when these were initially used, they were drawn on paper and if there was any change, the drawing was needed again. After that some started using the blocks over the chart to show the timelines and progress which was a bit easier.
We are very lucky to have computers which does this without causing any trouble and within seconds.
We can create a GANTT CHART in Excel too.
Let us check what are our requirements to create a GANTT CHART in Excel.
Here are the requirements
We’ll take the following fields into consideration.
ACTIVITY | PLANNED START | PLANNED END DATE | DURATION |
MILESTONE 1 | 30-12-2019 | 10-01-2020 | 11.00 |
MILESTONE 2 | 05-01-2020 | 15-01-2020 | 10.00 |
MILESTONE 3 | 13-01-2020 | 20-01-2020 | 7.00 |
MILESTONE 4 | 21-01-2020 | 28-01-2020 | 7.00 |
END | 25-01-2020 | 30-01-2020 | 5.00 |
The next step is to add data to this chart.
After the insertion of the chart, we need to add data to this chart. Adding the data to the chart needs the following steps.
After CLICKING THE ADD, a small dialog box named EDIT SERIES will open. We will put the Series name as the PLANNED START [ by selecting the cell] and Series value as the dates in the ” planned start column.”
This process will create a chart as shown in picture below. The bars against the dates on the horizontal axis.
Now , we need to find out the duration and stack it on the chart. So we’ll insert the DURATION SERIES next.
Now look at the picture above. Our chart is complete. But there are a few final fixes which we need.
We don’t need the dark blue portion of the chart.
The dates should preferably be on the top of the chart.
The process names are yet to be changed.
So let us try to perform these fixes.
Now , we will send the horizontal date axis to the top of the chart. Follow the steps.
Select the horizontal axis. An optionbox with name FORMAT AXIS would open on the right.
Go to the TEXT OPTIONS.
Go to LABELS > LABEL POSITION
Select HIGH.
It’ll send the horizontal axis values to top of the chart.
NOTE: THIS OPTION SETS THE VALUE AXIS POSITION.
Now , our chart is almost ready.
We have a few things left.
The bars are in opposite direction i.e. the activity which start first should show first. For this we will reverse the values.
Follow the steps:
Select the VERTICAL VALUE AXIS.
The FORMAT AXIS OPTION BOX will open on the right.
Go to TEXT OPTIONS[ fourth option icon].
Go to Axis Options >Axis Position and check CATEGORIES IN REVERSE ORDER.
This will immediately reverse out categories and put the bars , the way we want. But it’ll also
change the location of the HORIZONTAL VALUES AXIS.
So, again select the HORIZONTAL VALUE AXIS>FORMAT AXIS OPTION BOX.
Go to TEXT OPTIONS>LABELS.
Select LOW and the values will again go to the top of the chart. It happened because of the reversal of the values.
Refer the picture below for reference.
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