How to Create Gantt Charts in Excel
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Microsoft Excel remains the go-to option for many businesses to perform data calculations and create charts based on the results.
The Gantt chart is a useful guide that isn’t naturally available in Excel. Great for project management and milestone tracking, Gantt charts can help companies better visualize operations and streamline current processes.
In this piece, we’ll dive into the basics of Gantt charts and explore their benefits, then provide a step-by-step guide to creating them in Excel, along with some useful examples. Before long, you’ll be able to use Excel like a pro.
How to Create Gantt Charts in Excel
What are Gantt charts?
On the left-hand side, the Y-axis of the chart lists specific activities. At the top, the X-axis of the chart shows time.
There’s no fixed unit for time — it could be measured in weeks, days, hours, or minutes, depending on the tasks you’re tracking. In Excel, each task gets its own row.
As you can see in the example above from Microsoft, task 1 starts at time unit 0 and runs until just before task 2, which proceeds until task 3 begins.
It’s worth noting that tasks can overlap — the purpose of the Gantt chart isn’t to determine the order of tasks but to provide an easy way to see what’s happening, when, and how many processes are happening at once.
The Benefits of Gantt Charts
Gantt charts offer several benefits, including the following.
At-a-Glance Project Progression
Gantt charts let you see when projects began, how far along they are, if they’re reached specific milestones, and if they overlap with other projects.
This makes it possible to better understand how long processes will take and if concurrent processes may cause friction.
Actionable Insight
These charts also provide actionable insight for project management staff. Because teams can see project start dates and timelines at-a-glance, they can pinpoint potential bottlenecks and make changes.
In practice, teams might discover that three processes are due to start on the same day. By staggering start dates slightly, they can avoid possible performance issues.
Improved Time Management
Consider a Gantt chart showing multiple tasks with the same start date and team responsible for them. If left alone, this project framework could waste time, as one team is overworked, and others may not have enough on their plate.
A better understanding of what’s happening, when, and why can help companies improve their time management.
Reduced Risk of Resource Overload
Projects share a pool of finite resources. The more projects happening simultaneously, the bigger the resource drain and the greater the risk of resource overload.
Gantt charts offer a way to compare process resource needs and make adjustments …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
