If you need highly complicated ones Primavera is the de facto standard. However, read what Tufte has to say about them first:
Most of the Gantt charts are analytically thin, too simple, and lack substantive detail. The charts should be more intense. At a minimum, the charts should be annotated--for example, with to-do lists at particular points on the grid. About half the charts show their thin data in heavy grid prisons. For these charts the main visual statement is the administrative grid prison, not the actual tasks contained by the grid.
Are you using the Gantt charts for anything related to programming tasks (timelines for software completion, deliverables, etc)?
My experience in two recent projects using Gantt charts as part of timelining has left me with a bitter taste for how they relate to actual concrete programming tasks.
A key failure a number of our developers identified is code doesn't translate well to a linear scale. It's nearly meaningless for me to tell my software lead that a component is 80% "done" after a week, when the 80-90% gap could take a month, and 90%-100% might not even be attainable. (I have a nearly impossible time ever considering something 100% "done".)
Coupled with dependencies and "Waiting For" or "Requires", it feels entirely like it's not an appropriate or truly representative model. This has led to intense frustration and tensions. Most of the developers on my current project dread the weekly Gantt chart update.
I most often find myself simply saying, "whatever I said component A was at last week, add 1%". It leads to a massive disjoint as one moves further up the management chain.
I realize this is a mini-railing against something you might not even be intending to use them for. I also realize that our software company may not be getting maximum utility out of the style of project management we use. I only speak from a developer's perspective who has been frustrated time and again when faced with something so horribly artificial-feeling.
edit For what it's worth, we use Microsoft Project. I've also used dotproject for non-work related coding I've done, but never learned it fully enough to speak to its capabilities or strengths and weakenesses.
I have been involved with Construction for over twenty years. We recently had a Project with over 22,000 activities. Needless to say it became unmanageable and no-one used it. Real construction is similar in many ways with the development of software. One of the problems is reporting progress, in most cases is like trying to measure microns with a yardstick, the granularity and accuracy of the measuring instrument is not there.
On the above Project (a high-rise Tower) we came up with a graphic that had little squares representing activities. The graphic looked similar to the Tower:
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Using color, green for done and white for not done, you could have a snap of progress at a glance. You set them side by side and you can see weekly Progress.
I have been trying to refine the idea and make a start-up out of it:)
> (I have a nearly impossible time ever considering something 100% "done".)
I'd say you have a hard time being a programmer then. At the end of the day your code needs to get into production, and this should be after the point your job is "100% done" so the people having to do work after yours (qa, release etc.) can do their job.
Bug fixing etc. aside it all depends on finding a satisfactory "definition of done". We call it exactly like this and it is an important part of our project management early on in every project.
I mostly use them to communicate to clients what parts of a (non-programming) project are their responsibility, what parts are my responsibility, and what the dependencies between these parts are, so everyone gets everything done at the right time to reduce blocking.
Hold up. Do you really need a Gantt chart? Would a graph built in Excel/Numbers/GDocs be a better solution? Maybe a burn down chart. I have never found Gantt charts all that useful.
I've used Gantt Designer - http://timios.net/gantt/ before and it worked pretty well. It's a scaled down version of MS Project in some ways, without the clutter of full-blown project management.
If you know and like python, Faces (http://faces.homeip.net/) may be worth a look. I've enjoyed using it in the past. I was already familiar with Python and appreciated that I did not need to spend time learning a software package that I wasn't going to use on a regular basis. Ymmv.
A few months ago we launched a tool http://www.tomsplanner.com to create Gantt charts. One of our main objectives was that is had to be easy to use and user friendly. It is easier than MS Project and a lot more efficient than Excel.
Tom's Planner is a great web based tool to create Gantt charts with. Much faster than Excel and easier than MS Project. No learning curve, you can start working immediately!
Visio is nice but pricey. Basic Gantt charts can be done in most spreadsheeting apps and word processors that support tables but you can't link objects together.
last i looked there was nothing free that rivaled Project. other systems like AtTask (shudder) have the same functionality in spades, but poorly designed imho. scripting a basic gantt image creator from some image library and excel files is pretty trivial with perl and other languages.
[+] [-] yannis|15 years ago|reply
Most of the Gantt charts are analytically thin, too simple, and lack substantive detail. The charts should be more intense. At a minimum, the charts should be annotated--for example, with to-do lists at particular points on the grid. About half the charts show their thin data in heavy grid prisons. For these charts the main visual statement is the administrative grid prison, not the actual tasks contained by the grid.
See the discussion at Tufte http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
I do mine using LaTeXe!
[+] [-] ddoonie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jat850|15 years ago|reply
My experience in two recent projects using Gantt charts as part of timelining has left me with a bitter taste for how they relate to actual concrete programming tasks.
A key failure a number of our developers identified is code doesn't translate well to a linear scale. It's nearly meaningless for me to tell my software lead that a component is 80% "done" after a week, when the 80-90% gap could take a month, and 90%-100% might not even be attainable. (I have a nearly impossible time ever considering something 100% "done".)
Coupled with dependencies and "Waiting For" or "Requires", it feels entirely like it's not an appropriate or truly representative model. This has led to intense frustration and tensions. Most of the developers on my current project dread the weekly Gantt chart update.
I most often find myself simply saying, "whatever I said component A was at last week, add 1%". It leads to a massive disjoint as one moves further up the management chain.
I realize this is a mini-railing against something you might not even be intending to use them for. I also realize that our software company may not be getting maximum utility out of the style of project management we use. I only speak from a developer's perspective who has been frustrated time and again when faced with something so horribly artificial-feeling.
edit For what it's worth, we use Microsoft Project. I've also used dotproject for non-work related coding I've done, but never learned it fully enough to speak to its capabilities or strengths and weakenesses.
[+] [-] yannis|15 years ago|reply
On the above Project (a high-rise Tower) we came up with a graphic that had little squares representing activities. The graphic looked similar to the Tower:
Using color, green for done and white for not done, you could have a snap of progress at a glance. You set them side by side and you can see weekly Progress.I have been trying to refine the idea and make a start-up out of it:)
(You can think of software as a Tower as well!)
[+] [-] interesse|15 years ago|reply
I'd say you have a hard time being a programmer then. At the end of the day your code needs to get into production, and this should be after the point your job is "100% done" so the people having to do work after yours (qa, release etc.) can do their job. Bug fixing etc. aside it all depends on finding a satisfactory "definition of done". We call it exactly like this and it is an important part of our project management early on in every project.
[+] [-] dmd|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaler|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostbit|15 years ago|reply
dotProject: http://www.dotproject.net/
Redmine: http://www.redmine.org/
qdPM: http://qdpm.net/
I ended up pointing to Project Management software, but they all do Gantts...
[+] [-] nreece|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jblochjohnson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samratjp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sruffell|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biancthom|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1331|15 years ago|reply
The system is text-based with an editor built into the GUI. The downside is that installing it means pulling a number of KDE dependencies as well...
[+] [-] rcfox|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostbit|15 years ago|reply
Do you have anything to do with it?
[+] [-] shrikant|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biancthom|15 years ago|reply
www.tomsplanner.com
[+] [-] p858snake|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterwwillis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trucious|15 years ago|reply