To assure your project’s success and meet the project timeline, you must follow a good project plan. Effective project scheduling can help you stay on schedule. It’s almost impossible to stay within the budget if you don’t meet multiple deadlines.
Gantt chart software is an excellent option if you want to craft a detailed project schedule that will enable you to meet your project end date without constraints. Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart utilized in project management to display project timelines and tasks. This gives team members an overview of the project timeline, upcoming milestones, and project schedule.
Every bar chart represents a task, and the length of every bar represents the duration of time that task or step will take. The Gantt chart template gives project managers, project teams, and other key stakeholders an overview of the tasks that need to be completed when, by whom, and when they need to be completed.
Gantt charts typically include task duration, milestones, owner, and project end dates. With a quick look at the highlighted items, team members know their responsibilities and how their effort impacts the entire project- thanks to Gantt chart software.
The critical path for timelines of a project
It’s imperative to acknowledge the role of a critical path when crafting Gantt charts. A critical path is an approach that enables the mitigation of incidents where a task can cause a delay in subsequent tasks causing a delay in the overall project.
The critical path identifies the largest sequence of tasks and activities that must be addressed in order to complete the project. You can use Gantt charts to decide which tasks you need to attend to and finish in time for the project to be successful- hence, the critical path.
How To Use the Critical Path Method for Your Project Management
The critical path method is a unique technique that enables you to identify the necessary tasks for project completion. This technique involves mapping out the critical tasks needing attention to complete a project and determining project scheduling flexibility.
In addition, critical path methods will help you to improve future project planning, facilitate more productive resource management and minimize bottlenecks in your project. This is done by plotting out the project dependencies utilizing a network diagram that provides a better idea of the activities that can and can’t run in parallel. This will enable you to schedule accordingly.
How Do You Make a Gantt Chart
Over the years, Microsoft Excel has been used by project managers, project teams, and other key stakeholders as a simple project management tool. You can use Excel to create a Microsoft project schedule and monitor your progress with the Gantt chart template. This project management software enables project managers and project teams to plan every task with the help of an Excel workbook. It incorporates spreadsheets with columns for the task list, owner, as well as the start and end date.
Microsoft has also simplified the Gantt Chart-making process by offering advanced features in Microsoft Excel. They have developed a good work breakdown structure that incorporates chart templates that provide consistency in designs that most organizations require to look professional. To add, Microsoft has developed editable templates that are editable.
This feature provides templates that keep a dynamic connection to all pages created. However, you must be a member of an editable template Microsoft group called the template-authors group if you need to work on your editable template project.
In addition, Microsoft Excel enables you to export your project MPP file to Excel and offers an XLS file format for file saving. This extension works with the XLS spreadsheet program used with formulas, text, and calculations.
Simple Steps to Make a Gantt Chart in Excel
- Create a project table
Mention each task in a different row, with the respective tenure and start date and the number of days needed to complete that task. - Create an Excel bar chart
Select the start date range, B1:B11
Click on the insert tab, and choose the bar chart group.
Select a stacked bar in the 2-D group of your bar chart. - Add a tenure to the chat
At this level, right-click anywhere on your chart
Then find an option named “Select Data” in the drop-down menu and click on it.
Select Data Source will automatically open.
You’ll find that the start date is in the entries already
Click on the Add tab to enter the tenure, type “Tenure” in the series name, and open the “range selection” tab.
Select the tenure from the C2 first cell
Drag the relevant cells and click “OK” in the dialog box - Add a description to the Gantt chart
Run “select Data Source” and then click on the “open” option - Convert your bar graph to a Gantt Chart
Click on the bars you have and select “Format Data Series
Click on “No Fill” in the dialog box
Select “format Axis” on the task bar and then select “format Axis” and select categories in reverse order. You’ll see that the tasks are arranged chronologically.
However, when it comes to the construction schedule, bar charts are the most effective option.
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