I’m a big fan of using Gantt charts for project management. Companies that don’t use gantt charts, I think it’s weird.

What is a Gantt chart

What is a Gantt chart? This is the Gantt chart.

This is the Gantt chart when I took over in December.

  • Different colors show different people
  • Each line represents a task
  • The red vertical line represents the tasks that should be done today
  • The black arrows between tasks indicate the dependencies between tasks, and the previous tasks must be completed in order to complete the latter
  • Tasks with a central black line indicate completed tasks

From this gantt chart, I can see the following at a glance:

  1. Who should do what today
  2. When does this mission begin and when does it end
  3. What tasks a person has at a time
  4. What tasks should be done first and then later
  5. Which tasks can be done simultaneously
  6. Is this task dependent on other tasks? If yes, this task cannot be postponed. It must be completed on time or ahead of schedule, otherwise it will affect later tasks
  7. How many tasks have been completed and how many remain
  8. What are the subtasks under the big task
  9. What are the milestones of the mission

Why do we use gantt charts

Because in order to draw a Gantt chart, you have to force yourself to do the following things:

  1. Determine the start and end times for each task
  2. Determine the dependencies of the tasks
  3. Separate tasks that can run concurrently
  4. Identify time relationships between tasks of different people

After you have drawn the first version of the Gantt chart according to the above rules, you will find that some adjustments can be made, but they cannot be found until you have drawn the chart. As you adjust the Gantt chart, the project becomes clearer and clearer.

How do I do a Gantt chart

You can do gantt charts on paper or you can do them in Excel. Here’s a picture from the web.

This is using Excel to make the effect, but it is a little difficult to do.

Omniplan and MS Project are very professional Gantt chart making software, but the price is very high. After all, it’s productivity software, and you can make a lot of money with it, and software itself is expensive.

There are plenty of open source Gantt charts, but they’re either incomplete or ugly. Here is a relatively complete gantt chart making software: GanttProject

The official website of GanttProject is www.ganttproject.biz/, where you can download the software for macOS, Windows or Linux.

The interface of GanttProject after running is shown in the figure below.

To add a task, right-click on the left task panel or press Command + T on the keyboard. The shortcut key for Windows and Linux is Ctrl + T. As shown in the figure below.

A task is created, and its default start and end times are today. Right-click a task and choose Task Properties to open the task property setting interface, where you can set the start time and duration of the task. But you can’t set the end of the task. The end time is automatically calculated based on the start time and task duration. As shown in the figure below.

In this interface, you can also set the color of the task to achieve different colors for different people, or different colors for different projects. You can also update the task progress here.

Create multiple tasks. If the next task depends on the previous task, click the left mouse button on the dependent task color bar on the right, hold down and drag to the dependent task. The start time of dependent tasks automatically changes to the end time of dependent tasks, as shown below. In this case, you can only set the task duration, but cannot change the start time of the task.

If the dependency is incorrectly set, open the task properties of the dependent task and navigate to the pre-task TAB, where you can delete the dependent task or modify the dependent task. As shown in the figure below.

If you need to move the order of tasks, click to select it and press Alt + arrow keys up or down on your keyboard to move tasks.

I think one of the most important elements of the Gantt chart is the vertical red line, which points to today’s task. To open the red line, click edit-Settings on the menu bar, navigate to gantt chart Settings, and click Yes to make today red, as shown below.

Every day I open the Gantt chart, the red line points to that day.

GanttProject can export gantt charts as images, CSV, HTML or PDF files. Click Project – Export, click Raster image file, and click Next, as shown below.

You can export the gantt chart as a PNG file by setting the save path and date range for easy sharing.

GanttProject has more features that you can study after installing.

My official account: I have not heard the Code