Abstract
A must read article for all Project Managers. Project
Planning in Excel Many project managers
have tried using MS Project and other proprietary tools, but often find the way
these systems operate imposes severe restrictions on the way they plan and
manage projects Many project managers
are not aware that Excel based project planning exists. They do not fully understand the immense
graphic capabilities that Excel offers, enabling the simple creation of gantt
and pert charts. T... Continue reading ...
Planning your project is easier with excel based gantt charts. Using a proprietary project planning package means that you are locked in to the developers way of thinking.With a well crafted excel based solution, you are able to embed your way of thinking into the tool. If you want to use effort based scheduling, calculate project costs, or determine actual's in the way you want then excel is your answer.For more on excel based project scheduling Continue reading ...
Gantt Chart Reason#1: Finally you can see what you are doing!
Looking at a column of start and finish dates for tasks, is the primary alternative to using a Gantt Chart. Each row of your plan requires you to think about the dates, and position those dates in the context of preceding and dependent tasks. This thought process, attempting to visualize your dates in your head, takes valuable thinking time, and more importantly can only be performed effectively on one or two tasks at once. A Ga... Continue reading ...
Gantt Chart Reason#1: More Control
Using excel gives you more control over the gantt chart creation process. It provides you with the freedom to control key planning variables as you see fit. For example if you would like to convert 8 hours, or 7.5 hours into one day, it is straight forward to do with a simple formula. If you would rather plan in minutes, you can do this too. Whilst structured planning tools such as MS Project do have a place, experience suggests that for an experience... Continue reading ...
Posted by Marcus Shane on Wednesday, September 1, 2010,
Contrary to the beliefs of the main gantt chart software packages, every project and every plan has its own special requirements.
Some project plans may require you to measure and manage effort for billing purposes. Other plans may need minute based planning. There are so many different requirements of project planning that it is difficult to build these into a single gantt chart tool.
This is where MS Excel has some very substantial advantages in preparing gantt charts. The major, and o... Continue reading ...
The features discussed below are only available in Chart Gantt Ultimate, to be released in August 2010 We set ourselves the ambitious task of re-creating standard functionality in major project planning software tools. One of the main challenges in building an excel based gantt chart is the use of WBS (Work Breakdown Structure). There are a number of issues with the use of WBS in excel. Whilst we have seen other excel based tools that attempt to offer WBS, they do this via a combination of m... Continue reading ...
We are very excited by the launch of Chart Gantt 2.0. We set ourselves the ambitious task of adding significant functionality to Chart Gantt without the need for macro's. The issue with macro driven Excel based Gantt Charts is that they are inherently unpredictable. By steering clear of Macro's we have created a stable excel platform that just works. This enables users now to view as much as 3 years of chart in the one screen. This is a minor breakthrough in the Gantt Chart world, and took... Continue reading ...
Management Gantt Charts are significantly more complex and tailored than Planning Gantt Charts. The incorporation of actual figures into the planning process significantly complicates any planning model, as anyone who has used Microsoft Project to manage a project will attest. The significant issue with the vast majority of management Gantt Charts is that they are driven by duration rather than effort. Whilst tools such as MS Project do allow for effort driven management, the underlying premis... Continue reading ...
For anyone who would like to take the time to build their own excel based templates please see the below links and blogs. In our view, all of these approaches are time consuming and allow for significantly less flexibility than the Chart Gantt solution. However please explore these options if you are curious and have some time to kill.
- Building charts Using the Chart Function within MS Excel
This approach whilst it does produce a clumsy result will draw gantt charts. This approach does not... Continue reading ...
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