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Gantt Chart

Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a common project management tool for linking and scheduling interdependent activities. Informal Gantts often lack key features.
 
Capacity is a critical constraint on the project schedule. When a project spans peak holiday or vacation periods, the manager might mentally adjust due dates, or even overlook the constraint. Here the manager can reflect the constraint with custom weekends, holidays and special down days, or define a part-time project with custom workdays.
 
The horizontal time scale has four options for different audiences; calendar days, workdays, weeks and months. Constraint periods are shaded. Activities appear as colored bars. There are no activity relationships, but there can be up to seven sequential stages or discrete events on a single row.
 
Excel features: Advanced Boolean, Date and Lookup formulas; Name Manager named ranges and formulas; Data Validation rules and messages; Conditional Formatting; Tables linked for input, process and output; Controls; VBA: none

  • Contents

    Gantt Chart.zip, with

    • Gantt Chart.xlsx (Excel Workbook), with sample data
    • Gantt Chart.xltx (Excel Template), blank

  • Usage

    USAGE NOTES

    Configure: 
         Plan sheet, Stages legend (8 colored cells): up to 4 characters acronym to identify stages
         Plan sheet, Capacity thresholds (6 colored cells): enter days to shade as reduced capacity
         Calendar sheet: configure work week, holidays, other dates, set count boxes to count as downtime

    Setup: Fill white cells in header, and white columns:

    •      Fill columns per guidance message in column heading
    •      Event type is continuous (duration=stage length) or discrete (separated by stage length)
    •      Duration type is workdays or calendar days
    •      Stages S2-S7 are optional: use as sequential stages, discrete instances, or to change task color

    Monitor and maintain: 
         Show all days: while Day bucket is displayed, shows all calendar days with down days shaded  
         Use all days: shows schedule with no downtime (earliest completion scenario)
         Date bucket: select Month, Week or Day to expand or collapse horizon
         Status (explicit): set hold to pause or closed on task completion
         Status (implicit): current tasks start in past and end in future; overdue tasks end in past
         Select pencil icon (cell F1) to expand or collapse column group for space

    TEMPLATE NOTES

    Gantt Chart is most useful as a template. This allows you to save a blank version of the file which remains intact as you use it to create new files. Thus, you don't need to retrieve your last file and remove all the data to start a new one, just open the template and it will save as a workbook.

    Gantt Chart is provided as both Excel Template (Gantt Chart.xltx) and Excel Workbook (Gantt Chart.xlsx). This is so that you can see a filled example to learn how it works, and have the template for your own use. To use the template, first make it accessible.
         Option 1: save the template file in your template folder, which you can find in Options, Alt-F,T,S, something like C:\Users\ (username) \OneDrive\Documents\Office\Templates. 
         Option 2: open the template, you'll see Gantt Chart1 as the filename. Hit F12 (Save-As), remove the "1" in the name, and in Save as type:, select Excel Template. This selects your template folder automatically.

    To use the template, File-New and navigate to personal templates, Alt-F,N,Y,3, it should be there. You can pin it to the top to make it easier to find next time. 

    To change the template, follow Option 2 above; open, edit, then Save-As and overwrite the current one. For example, you might want to save it with some data that is standard or similar across projects.

$20.00Price
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