Who's Afraid of PERT and Gantt Charts?

Ability to deliver, staff and plan are the three key factors that repeatedly bother a project manager. Delivery plans are very much determined by the commencing and the deadlines assigned for the project as well as other tasks within the assignment. Budgeting determine appropriate finance allocation and expenditure for each task undertaken and time spent. The expenditure budget is always imperative for an assignment and the organization must check on how both relate. PERT and Gantt charts assist the Assignment Director plan for tasks and as well can help communicate to the customers on the project location. The Assignment Director must subdivide tasks into parts prior to any analytical planning, in regard, contribution from customers regarding to ending dates and time span is important. Though not the answer to all problems, there are a variety of tools which can assist the Project Director to plan a project.

Historically, the Program Evaluation and Review Method, 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.

Very often the project overruns even though the plans are perfect. The best way to handle this is to adjust the scheduling tools. Even if the software is very advanced, the human intelligence is required to make it work.

A project manager should use charts to monitor the project's status but he/she has to know the workflow for the project. A good tool is worthless if not used correctly and understood.

In any 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.

Steve Wilheir is a management and marketing consultant. Consult these resources to learn more about Gantt Charts, Pert Diagrams, and Henry Gantt.

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