Gantt Chart
Gantt charts have become a common technique for representing the phases and activities of a project work breakdown structure (WBS), so they can be understood by a wide audience all over the world. The technique is frequently used in Project Management to help breakdown the project.[5]
A common error made by those who equate Gantt chart design with project design is that they attempt to define the project work breakdown structure at the same time that they define scheduled activities. This practice makes it very difficult to follow the 100% Rule. Instead the WBS should be fully defined to follow the 100% Rule,[6] then the project schedule can be designed.[7]
Although a Gantt chart is useful and valuable for small projects that fit on a single sheet or screen, they can become quite unwieldy for projects with more than about 30 activities.[citation needed] Larger Gantt charts may not be suitable for most computer displays. A related criticism is that Gantt charts communicate relatively little information per unit area of display. That is, projects are often considerably more complex than can be communicated effectively with a Gantt chart.
Gantt charts only represent part of the triple constraints (cost, time and scope) on projects, because they focus primarily on schedule management. Moreover, Gantt charts do not represent the size of a project or the relative size of work elements, therefore the magnitude of a behind-schedule condition is easily miscommunicated. If two projects are the same number of days behind schedule, the larger project has a larger effect on resource utilization, yet the Gantt does not represent this difference.[citation needed]
Although project management software can show schedule dependencies as lines between activities, displaying a large number of dependencies may result in a cluttered or unreadable chart.
Because the horizontal bars of a Gantt chart have a fixed height, they can misrepresent the time-phased workload (resource
A common error made by those who equate Gantt chart design with project design is that they attempt to define the project work breakdown structure at the same time that they define scheduled activities. This practice makes it very difficult to follow the 100% Rule. Instead the WBS should be fully defined to follow the 100% Rule,[6] then the project schedule can be designed.[7]
Although a Gantt chart is useful and valuable for small projects that fit on a single sheet or screen, they can become quite unwieldy for projects with more than about 30 activities.[citation needed] Larger Gantt charts may not be suitable for most computer displays. A related criticism is that Gantt charts communicate relatively little information per unit area of display. That is, projects are often considerably more complex than can be communicated effectively with a Gantt chart.
Gantt charts only represent part of the triple constraints (cost, time and scope) on projects, because they focus primarily on schedule management. Moreover, Gantt charts do not represent the size of a project or the relative size of work elements, therefore the magnitude of a behind-schedule condition is easily miscommunicated. If two projects are the same number of days behind schedule, the larger project has a larger effect on resource utilization, yet the Gantt does not represent this difference.[citation needed]
Although project management software can show schedule dependencies as lines between activities, displaying a large number of dependencies may result in a cluttered or unreadable chart.
Because the horizontal bars of a Gantt chart have a fixed height, they can misrepresent the time-phased workload (resource