Hello Folks:

Simply put, haven’t had much experience dealing with Gantt charts; but after studying Gantt charts, the take of each individual on this topic conjured a few ideas into my mind; I just had to share them with you; hope you don’t mind.

I do agree with most of what has been written so far.

Hetal, the initiator of the topic, attempts to outline what a Gantt chart is to him before throwing it up for this discussion.
Saadi, whose posting’s code is 1246, doesn’t hesitate to add that a Gantt chart could be an outline and so should be realistically drawn out.
With similar firm mindedness other great suggestions were posted after Saadi’s; in fact, participant ia14 who makes a posting coded 1236, even outlines the four stages he thinks constitute the phases of a Gantt chart design; then neb2 whose posting is coded 1256 then drops the idea that a contingency plan be made to back up a Gantt chart; he feels this should take care of unexpected occurrences.

I see nothing wrong with these well thought out suggestions. Only problem in all of these is that we seem to forget a Gantt chart is drawn by a person, implemented by people and on a budget. If we should forget these components associated with Gantt chart, I will not hesitate to conclude that we are getting too spread out from the core; this alone could eventually cost more than the project itself.

I believe the person designing the Gantt chart is the Manager.

If I were to take his place my first preoccupation would be to establish clarity of thought with respect to what the project entails. Appropriate project units will then be defined and if the company is not too new to me, leaders of the project units will then be selected knowing each of their competencies; otherwise advice for the unit supervisors will be sought from the head of the department later during the introduction of the Gantt chart of the project to the head of the department as I seek his/her approval. Then I proceed as follows:
– project Gantt chart will then be physically drawn out
– the accompany the Gantt chart will follow
– the project budget to fit will then be worked out
– to take care of any unexpected eventualities, an amount equal to about 10% of the budgets cost will be
set aside.

– Consultation with the projects committee will then be arranged to seek his/her approval of all spelt our
for the project for the project, so far.
– During this meeting the following will be accomplished:
: the Gantt chart will be laid out together with the accompanying PERT chart
: project’s budget computations will be laid out and explained

If the project receives a go from the project committee
– a pre-project’s meeting with the select project’s unit supervisors will arranged

– during the meeting, the supervisors are made to understand that selecting then was based on trust
– that the success of the project will be theirs and
then each of them will be handed with the details of their unit’s operation
– The supervisors will then told that there will be a weekly project follow up to ensure the project’s
milestones are being approached.