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.

PERT, the Program Evaluation and Review Method, was a product of the 1950s. PERT is a scheduler based on events. Labels then go in the nodes on the diagram of the project. For aerospace and R&D projects, PERT has been very helpful when it is uncertain what the time constraints are. Originally, the old critical path method (CPM), put activity labels on the arrow from box to box. PERT borrowed this feature and nowadays, most PERT systems incorporate aspects from both CPM and new innovations of PERT. To an untrained eye, a PERT chart looks like numerous boxes connected by arrows but to a manager with deadlines to meet, a PERT chart is a flow diagram that schedules the major events of a project.

The linear format or bar chart will be used generally in scheduling at the task level. One among them is the Gantt chart. The time-phased requirements will be plotted against the task, personnel and total project for use. The PERT/CPM hybrids will be highly related to the Gantt chart. But the use of Gantt chart is easier as they show the critical paths and milestones clearly to the team on the first sight.

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.

Even the best software can only be as good as the brain which uses it; thus, even with help from charts, it is truly up to the Project Manager, in the end, to comprehend the workflow for any particular project.

Article Source: AddonDashboard.com Article Directory

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

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