Project Management

Gantt Charts

Pre-Assessment

Who has heard of a Gantt Chart?

Who would like to explain what a Gantt chart is?

Who has used a chart to help organize a project?

Why should I care?

Gantt charts can help with lifes projects

Remodeling a bathroom

Building a deck

Organizing a wedding

Cooking

Group Projects

Think about a group project you have done

How did it go?

Was it easy to split up tasks?

Did you have timelines?

Was it easy to co-ordinate the tasks?

Was it easy to express what needed to be done and when?

Did you use any techniques that helped?

Wish there was a better way?

Why should I care (cont.)

Used by project managers

Construction Managers

Excellent employment opportunities

Projected employment 487,000 in 2006, 564,00 in 2016

Increase of 77,00 in next 10 years

Median Salary Building equipment contractors $75,200 (Php3.1M/yr)

Electrical contractors $74,380 (Php3.1M/yr)

Residential building construction $69,400 (Php2.9M/yr)

Why Should I Care (cont.)

Engineering and Natural Science Managers

Job growth about as fast as average

Median Salary

R&D in the physical, engineering and life sciences $120,000

Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing $111,070

Architectural, engineering and related services $88,990

Expectations

Understand that a Gantt chart is a useful tool for planning and scheduling projects

Should be able to read and produce a Gantt chart

Gantt Chart Overview (cont.)

What does it look like?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Advantages Planning and scheduling Allows you to assess how long a project should take

Lays out the order in which tasks need to be carried out

Helps manage the dependencies between tasks

Monitoring a project Allows you to immediately see what should have been

achieved at a point in time

Shows how remedial action may bring the project back on course

Advantages and Disadvantages (cont.)

Shortcomings

Quite unwieldy for project with more than about 30 activities

Does not represent the size of a project or the relative size of work elements

History of the Gantt Chart Created by Laurence Gantt (1861-1919) in

1910 Mechanical engineer, management consultant

and industry advisor

Used as a visual tool to show scheduled and actual progress of projects

Accepted as commonplace today but was an innovation of world wide importance

Used on large construction projects Hoover Dam in 1931 Interstate highway network in 1956

Evolution of the Gantt Chart

Basic Gantt Chart (1918)

Evolution (cont.)

fill in the bar method to show project completion

Sequential and Parallel Activities

Sequential, also called Linear

Activities that are dependent on other activities being completed first

Ex: Must design before build

Must preheat oven before inserting pizza

Parallel, also called Nondependent

Not dependent on completion of any other task

May be done at any time before or after a particular stage is reached

Steps for Creating a Gantt Chart

1. List all activities in the plan

2. Head up graph paper with the days or weeks through to task completion

3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper

4. Schedule activities

5. Presenting the analysis

Steps for Creating a Gantt Chart

1. List all activities in the plan

earliest start date

estimated length of time it will take

Whether it is parallel or sequential

If sequential show which tasks they depend on

List All Activities Example Task Possible Start Length Type Dependent

on

1. High level analysis

week 1 5 days Sequential

2. Selection of hardware platform

Week1 1 day Sequential 1

3. Install and commission hardware

Week3 2 weeks Parallel 2

4.Detailed analysis of core modules

Week1 2 weeks Sequential 1

5. Detailed analysis of supporting utilities

Week1 2weeks Sequential 4

Steps (cont.)

2. Head up graph paper with the days or weeks through to completion

3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper

Draw a rough draft

Steps (cont.)

4. Schedule Activities

Schedule activities so that sequential actions are carried out in the required sequence

Where possible, schedule parallel tasks so that they do not interfere with sequential actions

Allow some slack time for holdups, overruns

Steps (cont.)

5. Presenting the analysis

Prepare final version

Checking for Understanding

What are some reasons to use a Gantt chart (benefits of using)?

What are some projects where you might use a Gantt chart?

What is the difference between a dependent and independent task?

Give an example

Checking for Understanding (cont.) It is day 5

What are they behind schedule on?

What are they ahead of schedule on?

Based from Report

Date 11/26/2013:

Activity WRITE

REPORT is behind

schedule.

Activity

EVALUATION is

ahead of schedule.