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Gantt charts are tools used to establish projects and keep them on schedule. These charts establish timelines for each individual task for a project and help a project manager and the individual employees working on a project keep it on time and streamlined. These charts can be time consuming and tedious to produce manually but there is a huge swathe of free software available online to help produce these on your own. Larger charts may require training and practice before they can successfully be made due to the general complexity of each chart and each task assigned in a chart. Six sigma training is not necessary to build a chart as much of the design is highly intuitive once the general layout is established and charts are even easier to build with Gantt producing software.
Charts are subject to human error and inexperience with production of these charts can lead to common errors such as overloading an individual project and chart with tasks. The point of a Gantt chart is not to micromanage every detail of your employees but is instead meant to facilitate cooperation and production flow amongst them. It is a common fallacy to over input tasks into a chart and this only leads to confusion amongst employees and management. Another danger with this is assigning tasks to time slots that are unreasonable or already too full due to the confusion caused by the data overload. The best solution to this is to work with employees to group tasks together and assign them to reasonable time slots rather than to guess wildly.
It is critical to never forget the main objective of a Gantt chart, to help facilitate time management amongst employees to work on a task. Do not assume that all tasks are equal in time and resource cost and over load time slots with what you think are simple tasks. This form of uneven representation is toxic to the project and will lead to severe delays as early hiccups caused by this will stifle later tasks and inevi tably the project as a whole.
Finally, remember that making a chart has a single goal, a single focus: to produce the project on time and in good quality with maximum cooperation and minimal trips. Review time restraints, cost restraints, and the scope of the project multiple times while building the chart to make sure it is realistic. Keep communication flow between management and the employees who will be working on the project open so that a realistic task setup can be achieved. Define the scope of the project before you break it down into individual tasks so that you have a better idea of what the work goals are.
Now that you're armed with these Gantt chart tips for success, you might find it interesting to learn more about its creator, Henry Gantt and some of his other contributions to the field of modern management.