Hello,

I have yet to gain industry experience, but I do have experience in creating Gantt charts for my Capstone class. A good practice is to start off by documenting what the purpose of the Gantt chart is and then going from there. Your bullet points basically hit the nail on the head on what constitutes a proper Gantt chart. It's nice to add milestone markers that highlights important tasks that absolutely need to be finished before moving forward with the project during a certain time frame. Also, it can be helpful to color code the bars of different tasks within the project based on their status {planned, released, in progress, finished, or delayed).

I've realized several things about Gantt charts in the industry. The plan laid out by Gantt chart should be followed as close as possible, especially since projects have deadlines to be met. However, one has to consider there will be setbacks and there will always be problems that cause dates to be pushed back or become more flexible. In my experience, projects have been pushed back for several reasons: design changes leading to re-testing, problems with documentation, regulatory issues, budget issues, and inconsistent data. When creating a Gantt chart it is very important to keep in mind that these things will come up.

Hi,
To complete a project successfully, you must control a large number of activities ,and ensure that they are completed on schedule. If you miss a deadline or finish a task out of sequence, there could be a knock-on effect on the rest of the project.It could deliver a late result. That's why gantt chart is helpful to see everything that needs to be done,and know at a glance.Gantt charts convey this information visually. They outline all of the tasks involved in a project.This gives you an instant overview of a project, its associated tasks, and when these need to be finished.

When you set up a gantt chart you need to think of all the task involved in the project.As a part of this process ,you'll work will workout who is responsible for each task, how long each task take,what problem will each team encounter.

I would like to share four step to develop a gantt chart for your project
1.Identify essential task :- All the task needed to complete the project
2.Identify task relationship:- shows the relationship between each task in a project
3.Input activity into a template:- Draw your chart by hand or using software
4.chat progress :- As the project move along, it will evolve.

The bullet points you listed as well as what others have said cover a lot of what is required of a Gantt chart. However, I'd like to emphasize what should be on a Gantt chart. Because it is a plan created well before most of the components are executed, it is at best a template and guideline for the production path. Therefore, it need not be followed strictly, but rather used a guideline. That being said, when planning it out, it is crucial to be as realistic as possible and also consider errors and setbacks. That way the timeline has that built into it and a reasonable deadline can still be reached. Further, as someone above mentioned, I think it's extremely important to note major milestones along the way to indicate certain checkpoints have been reached. This could also signify transitions from specific phases, i.e. shifting from designing to manufacturing.

Edit: I wanted to post this as a reply to the general thread

- Saad Ali

One thing that is very important when creating a Gantt chart is to recognize when the project should be done by and budget the time accordingly. By this, I mean that it should not be scheduled that a specific part of the project is to be done by the due date. You want to leave plenty of time for changes and adjustments that may need to be made to documents before the project is due. It's better to have a project done early than have it finished at the last minute.

Hi, thank you for sharing with us the steps needed for a Gantt chart, it will be really useful towards the upcoming project. I would like to add somethings to your comment.
First, I was thought that if any assignments that needed to be done were missed, the team members must come up with a "contingency plan" in order to be able to complete the task on time without having to miss the scheduled deadline in the gantt chart. From my experience in Capstone project, my group had some setbacks due to the slow progress of the design development, nevertheless we worked together with a contingency plan that allowed us to complete the project as scheduled in the Gantt chart. Maybe this might be out of context towards the development of a gantt chart but it is definitely a useful tip to meet deadlines in a project without having delays.
Second, there are somethings in within your steps that I think it shall be considered and it will be most helpful towards the development of a useful Gantt chart. In step 2, it is not only essential to identify the relationship between each task in a project, but the distribution of the work too. like who is most qualified to complete this task, how available the team members are, are additional resources necessary to complete the tasks? and in this step it is also necessary to decide on a reasonable deadline to complete each tasks (taking into account holidays and weekends. In step 4, I think that it is necessary to add that when the gantt chart is completed, it has to be distributed to team members for review and feedback. It's important to do so, since it will be easier to allow for contingencies, plan additional resources, or even propose a revised schedule at this stage, rather than at a critical juncture later.

One thing that I have come to learn is that you no matter how much you plan, some things are out of your control. For instance in my field we have to do several pre-clinical trials, which have to be scheduled with the place doing the trials. However, you may not have much control when comes to dates due to several reasons: multiple projects need pre-clinical studies, limited animals, other companies that need testing. As a result you may be working on a project and all the sudden a pre-clinical trial is only several weeks away. Sometimes no contingency plan will help you get all the work done on time, instead you must choose which information you need first. What data is more important to have sooner than later, and then work from there.

I think mistakes should be taken into consideration when making a gantt chart.There should be room for error for materials and even in the lab. There should be a soft deadline and a hard one with weeks in between in case things go wrong that you cannot plan for such as equipment failure or etc.

Hey Saad,

I want to agree with your point about being realistic and accounting for errors and setbacks. For Capstone, whenever we work on our Gantt charts we make sure to include some margin of error. It's important to stick to deadlines and keep them in mind, but at the end of the day we're human. Sometimes materials take longer than expected to deliver, which would delay testing, and other parts of a project. One setback can set a chain of events that causes delays for the rest of the projects. Accounting for this ahead of time helps lower the risk of having a catastrophic failure and an entire project falling apart.

-Murad

The Gantt chart should be detail schedule which shows the design input and output development process. With the overall design development schedule it is import to give each section enough time with risk taken under confederation. The schedule should have enough room for error edit to avoid risk. The clinical/ technical research to procurement and requirement might change over time or take longer time to be attained. The gantt chart should be well detailed and must have enough room for error.

I think that even though Gantt charts are meant to document all of the related activities for a project, I think overall flexibility is key to delivering a project.

Sort of related: A common thing that happens at my job is that project teams know their drug file date a few years in advance. While that is helpful, sometimes it causes the project team to "tinker" with the manufacturing process development a bit too much. Essentially, the amount of time the team has until file always manages to get filled up with work items (whether they are necessities or not). With a resource crunch, the directors are putting pressure on the project managers to try to condense all project activities down to "free up" that staff for a period of time to work on other projects. So if a file date is in 2019, the project manager is pressured to prioritize and accomplish all the project goals by end of 2018, freeing up a year of time. So Gantt charts are great at visually planning things, but the project managers need to be flexible and creatively prioritize certain activities over others. Gantt charts are great for this though, because they can give you a good estimate of how much time you can save by eliminating/abbreviating certain activities.

- Laura Wehmeyer

I can relate to anyone else in this thread who had to deal with missed milestones due to unexpected delays. You can try to plan for anything and everything, but sometimes things are out of your control. I've had a vendor stop communicating with us for a month because whatever staff was supposed to speak to us had taken a month off for Christmas/ New Years. We found an alternative in time but had we been dependent on them, the chart wouldn't be able to fix the delay they could have caused.

I believe that Gantt charts are great to keep you in focus with what your deliverables, milestones and project scope should be. In my industry experience, I've used Gantt charts to address CAPAs and NCRs. The CAPAs would require a due date set by corporate and you would plan accordingly so that you don't get stuck with a few headaches down the line. With respect to supplier non-conformitties, it definitely helps the supplier side to provide them with some sort of timetable that they should adhere to. A capable user of the chart should be able to see things in the future that may require more or less attention. If I had anything to attribute to the way I used to do the charts, it would be to give yourself, if you have that luxury, 2x the time to finish the task + 10% more time than you really need. Note that a properly made Gantt chart/project should not make you feel rushed to complete a task.

Hi,

I've had an issue with not being able to get data from some material tests for our product prototype. My team was set back a few weeks (more than the allowable amount in our Gantt chart). We ended up having to scrap some product features in order to finish in time. I thought I would mention it since I'm sure its a common issue when faced with a hard deadline.