All language subtitles for 1. The Gantt Chart

Now let's look at the practical essentials
2

of preparation of the project schedule.
3

Now that we have all the deliverables,
4

a precedence diagram showing what order they come together
5

and estimates of how long they will take,
6

we can calculate the overall project schedule
7

and the critical path that drives it.
8

The Gantt chart maps the precedence diagram
9

onto the calendar, and is the formal baseline
10

for the project time.
11

For a project of any complexity,
12

we need the help of a Gantt chart application,
13

for example, Microsoft Project,
14

Primavera, or ProjectLibre,
15

to do all the date calculations.
16

We start by entering the project start date,
17

enter the number of hours in the work day
18

individually by resource if they differ
19

for different people or roles,
20

enter the deliverables, their durations from the estimates,
21

and the links between them from the precedence diagram.
22

The tool skips weekends and any specified holidays
23

and lays the deliverables across the calendar.
24

And the tool calculates the critical path
25

that drives the schedule end date.
26

Creating the precedence diagram first and then entering
27

the structure into the Gantt tool
28

makes building a schedule easy
29

and provides several other advantages.
30

The top-level schedule includes
31

only deliverables, not activities.
32

The number of precedence links is minimized
33

to just what is needed.
34

So the Gantt charts ends up being as simple as possible,
35

easily maintainable, and actually useful
36

throughout the project, which is not always the case.
37

Far too often, we dive into the Gantt software
38

without having prepared a precedence diagram first
39

and end up with a schedule that is too complex
40

and hard to maintain.
41

Whenever you make a small update,
42

the changes cascade and are hard to understand.
43

This common complexity problem is solved
44

by developing the precedence diagram first.
45

Also, avoid the built in precedence diagram function
46

in the Gantt software since it redraws the diagram
47

after every update.
48

And instead, maintain the precedence diagram
49

in a separate drawing tool.
50

Usually, you would never keep data in two places
51

if you could avoid it.
52

However, this is an important exception
53

since the need to make updates in two tools
54

is more than outweighed by the complete control you retain
55

over the precedence diagram layout.
56

And the precedence diagram is for human communication,
57

so the layout is really important.