The goal of "project management" is to make sure projects are completed within defined constraints of scope, quality, time and cost. This is done by organizing and managing resources - whether those resources are land, workers, money or information. Projects that require such management are usually complex tasks, such a constructing a building or implementing a sophisticated software package.
Project management includes developing a project plan, which includes defining project goals and objectives, specifying tasks or how goals will be achieved, what resources are needed, and associating budgets and timelines for completion. It also includes implementing the project plan and to ensure that the plan is being managed according to plan.
A special type of horizontal bar chart is used to give a graphical overview and list of all activities, elements and dependencies of a project. It is a chart that has rectangular bars of lengths proportional to values that they represent which helps in the comparison of two or more values. An example of a bar chart is the Gantt chart. It depicts the overall image of a project's timeline.
This chart shows you the beginning and ending dates of the terminal and summary project elements. These elements make work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project. Some of these also illustrate how some network relationships take precedence between activities.
The format of initial in the chart was developed by Henry Laurence Gantt. Henry Gantt innovated many different charts and inspired many others. The Gantt chart that is popular today was described in 1942 as a layout chart by W. Clark. The use of additional charting lines to show the dependencies between tasks was a much later innovation and did not really become established until 1987.
In project management, the chart can show when the project terminal elements start and finish, summary elements or terminal element dependencies. A terminal element is defined as the smallest task tracked as part of the project effort. Most modern project scheduling packages are able to produce a representation of tasks in a Gantt format. Other project management applications avoid this concept in favor of simpler communication tools (message boards, to-do lists, simple scheduling, etc).
The way to create this chart begins by determining and listing the necessary activities. Next, sketch out how you expect the chart to look. List which items depend on others and what activities take place when. For each activity, list how many man-hours it will require, and who is responsible. Lastly, determine the throughput time.
The primary advantages of this technique are ease of understanding and an excellent graphical overview. The main disadvantages are that projects of high complexity cannot be effectively communicated using Gantt charts.
