The Importance of Gantt Charts

As we all know, project managers must control numerous activities to ensure that they're completed successfully on schedule. If you cannot finish a task within the fixed time or even finish a task out of sequence, there could be chain reactions on the rest of the project. It could deliver late as a result, and cost a lot more. That's why most project managers need to see everything that needs to be done, when each activity needs to be completed.

Gantt charts show this information visually. All of the tasks involved in a project, and their order are demonstrated by it. This gives you an instant overview of a project, including all kinds of tasks, and when these need to be finished.

Why Use Gantt Charts?

For project managers, when you want to start a Gantt chart, you have to be familiar with all tasks in your project, and think out who will be responsible for each task, how long each task will take, and what problems your team will encounter. These reasonable ideas can help you make sure the rationality of assigning each task, what's more, you have to plan for anything that you might run into before you start.

The important feature of Gantt chart is that it can help you work out all aspects of projects. Project managers have to know the minimum time it will take to deliver. Besides, this problem which tasks need to be completed before others can start need to be solved in advance. Project managers can use Gantt chart to create the criterion that all tasks must be completed in sequence on time if the whole project is to deliver on time. Because of this, progress of tasks can be shown by Gantt chart anywhere or anytime.

Gantt Chart in ZenTao

ZenTao is a Scrum tool for application lifecycle management(ALM). The Gantt Chart is one of its marvoulus features and is designed based on the four types of task dependencies. You can see it clearly displayed in the screenshot below.

In the context of Agile software development, a Gantt chart is used to illustrate releases or sprints. Agile tools generally offer features of Gantt Chart to help visualize the task dependencies and the task relationship of task processors and successors.

If you want to know more about Gantt Chart and Agile, you can refer to Gantt Charts and Agile: charts, methodology and tools.

If you want to know more the Gantt Chart feature in agile tools, you can refer to Gantt Chart in ZenTao ALM.