Scheduling is one of the important aspects of project management as it involves a list of a project's terminal elements with intended start and finish dates. And these terminal elements are the lowest elements (activity or deliverable) in a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a basic and widely-used project management technique for defining and streamlining the total scope of a project by using a hierarchical tree structure. This project schedule development is an iterative process and continues throughout the life cycle of a project as project management plans are revised as new risk factors crop up and old risk events disappear.
A Gantt chart, named after US-based mechanical engineer, Henry Gantt (1861-1919), is a popular type of bar diagram that vividly describes a project schedule. Gantt chart depicts the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. The terminal elements and summary elements together constitute the WBS of a project. Some Gantt charts also reveal the dependency (i.e., precedence network) relationships between several activities. However, to draw a Gantt chart, the first thing is to draw the network diagram showing the dependencies or sequence between activities and then one can realistically start determining a project's schedule. Below is the simplified network diagram for the "Build Shed" project (Figure 1).
The above network diagram depicts the relationships between the main activities (rectangles) that are required to build a shed. Once drawing of network diagram is completed, then the next important thing is to create a Gantt chart. A Gantt chart is a very useful project management technique that provides an overview schedule, something that the network diagram does not. |
