In project management, three types of schedules continually haunt the project manager: performance, personnel and budget. Performance schedules are bounded generally by start and stop dates for every task, and form the general basis for the other schedules on the project. Cost schedules cover allocation and spending for each and every task as a function of time. The cost schedule is important to the budget of the project.
Management has to look at everything and how it all relates. PERT and Gantt charts help the Project Manager schedule projects, and also can be used to talk to the client about where the project is at. The Project Manager has to initially break the work down into segments before any analysis tool can be used to schedule, and input from the client side as to deadlines and time frames can be invaluable. While not panaceas for all ills, there are a number of tools that can aid the Project Manager in scheduling a project.
Historically, the Program Evaluation and Review Technique, also referred to as PERT, was a creation of the 1950s. PERT was and is an event-oriented scheduler, the labels go into the nodes on the diagram of the project. It has typically found uses in aerospace and R & D projects for which the time is uncertain for a given activity. PERT borrowed a feature from the old critical path method (CPM), an activity-oriented scheduler, which puts the activity label on the arrow from box to box in the PERT diagram enabling the manager to get a controllable time for each activity. Most PERT systems are hybrids nowadays, having the best of both the PERT and CPM worlds at the manager's command. A PERT chart looks like a lot of boxes connected by arrows, basically, is more like flow diagrams to the naked eye.
Schedules at the task level generally use a linear format or bar chart. A Gantt chart is one of those. If you have to plot the time-phased requirements for task, personnel, and total project, these are the ones to use. Gantt charts are related to the PERT/CPM hybrids, but are much easier for a team to understand simply because they paint the critical paths and milestones for projects so clearly to the naked eye.
Understanding what a Gantt chart does is critical to using it. Microsoft Project, for example, has a Gantt chart generator. If you understand the elements of your project and when it is that you have to get them done, you can use this generator to plot how the project has to occur, and when the milestones have to happen, and build your chart that way. You can use Excel to create this type of chart by using the stacked bar chart type feature, but with all the other software on the market, it isn't the easiest way to do it. For any software you use, you will need to know exactly what your activities are for the project, and which activities hinge on others getting done. You will basically set up a timeline for the most critical events and backfill until everything occurs in the order in which you need it to for the project to get finished on time.
In spite of the best laid plans, frequently project overruns occur. At that time whatever scheduling tools are used must be adjusted. It takes human intelligence to make it all work, no matter how sophisticated the software.
Even with the help of charts it is really up to the Project Manager to understand the flow of work for the project. The best software is only as good as the mind that uses it.
Steve Wilheir is a project management consultant specializing in active metrics-based management through diagrams, charts, and statistics. Consult these resources to learn more about Gantt Diagrams, Pert Charts, and Henry Gantt.
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