Think You CAN’T Do a GANTT?

Why do people find Gantt charts intimidating?

Because they are used to intimidate.

Most people only experience Gantt charts as finished products. Someone has created a timetable projecting work  a year or more into the future. It combines:

• Activities by multiple staff members
• Tasks and subtasks of a project that go on for many pages
• Expectations for productivity by the month or the week
• Interdependence among team members
• Vehicles (or barriers) to achieving goals
• Projections of staffing gaps and crunch periods
• Several iterations, each of which reveals a different time period, level of detail, or task owner
• A legend (the creator knows you will not be able to navigate the Gantt chart without one)

The person walking you through it (very likely its creator) talks as though this 50,000-foot view with countless moving parts can be instantly absorbed into your consciousness.

But that is not really her goal. She is the project manager. Sure, she wants you to comprehend the big picture.Yes, she hopes you eventually will think in a nuanced way about the details for which you are responsible. But at this moment, her primary purpose is to convince you that a plan exists, and that she is the only one who can fully grasp it.

Why does the project manager do this?

First of all, forgive her; she cannot help it. After spending several weeks anticipating how numerous variables must sing together in harmony, and safeguarding against the many, many things that may go wrong, she really is the only one who can fully grasp the implications of failing to do things in the right order, with the right people in the room.

But the “effectively intimidating” Gantt chart has two strategic purposes as well:

• It establishes her as the ultimate authority on the project—and rightly so. Her effectiveness as a team leader depends on everyone treating this document as the only reliable roadmap, and seeing her as the navigator.

• She needs your help. No matter how careful she has been, she will not have anticipated everything. You and your colleagues are the subject matter experts who will make this plan happen; once you get past the initial intimidation, you will study your roles and raise red flags about anything that may interfere with your ability to deliver. Now everyone on the team has her back.

Three keys to the effectively intimidating Gantt chart

1. Let the Milestones Chart the Path. For each task in the project, there are milestone achievements. These are not necessarily big flashy events; a milestone is the completion of a step (big or small) that enables other tasks to move forward, or directly triggers them. Milestones reveal the inter-dependencies across tasks and among subtasks, and they show where the teams will need to work in deliberate coordination. If individuals do not understand the cross-project milestones, they will innocently (but lethally) sabotage them.
   
2. Do Your Homework. If you are guessing about resource needs or time lines (instead of making educated estimates) then your Gantt chart will be a work of fiction. Your team will see right through your ignorance, and you will lose their confidence.  Instead, seek firm numbers from the members of your team who have the experience to provide them. Not only will your plan be more realistic, your team will have shared ownership for both the plan and the outcome.
   
3. Use Software, but Don’t be a Lackey. There are very cool tools that can help take some of the toil out of the mechanical creation of a Gantt chart. But do not be fooled; they are neither necessary nor sufficient. Not necessary: you can do what you need in a spreadsheet just as effectively. Not sufficient: You need to think through the timetable and resource needs of each task, not just punch in uninformed dates. I would even argue that the first time you make a Gantt chart, you will learn much more by doing it the slow way, perhaps in a spreadsheet program, than you will using something that spits out answers based on algorithms you did not create yourself.