How one can Create Gantt Charts in Excel

What are Gantt charts?

On the left-hand aspect, the Y-axis of the chart lists particular actions. On the prime, the X-axis of the chart reveals time.

There’s no mounted unit for time — it may very well be measured in weeks, days, hours, or minutes, relying on the duties you’re monitoring. In Excel, every job will get its personal row.

As you’ll be able to see within the instance above from Microsoft, job 1 begins at time unit 0 and runs till simply earlier than job 2, which proceeds till job 3 begins.

It’s value noting that duties can overlap — the aim of the Gantt chart isn’t to find out the order of duties however to supply a simple strategy to see what’s occurring, when, and what number of processes are occurring without delay.

The Advantages of Gantt Charts

Gantt charts supply a number of advantages, together with the next.

At-a-Look Challenge Development

Gantt charts allow you to see when initiatives started, how far alongside they’re, in the event that they’re reached particular milestones, and in the event that they overlap with different initiatives.

This makes it attainable to raised perceive how lengthy processes will take and if concurrent processes might trigger friction.

Actionable Perception

These charts additionally present actionable perception for undertaking administration workers. As a result of groups can see undertaking begin dates and timelines at-a-glance, they’ll pinpoint potential bottlenecks and make adjustments.

In observe, groups may uncover that three processes are as a result of begin on the identical day. By staggering begin dates barely, they’ll keep away from attainable efficiency points.

Improved Time Administration

Think about a Gantt chart exhibiting a number of duties with the identical begin date and crew answerable for them. If left alone, this undertaking framework may waste time, as one crew is overworked, and others might not have sufficient on their plate.

A greater understanding of what’s occurring, when, and why may also help firms enhance their time administration.

Lowered Threat of Useful resource Overload

Initiatives share a pool of finite sources. The extra initiatives occurring concurrently, the larger the useful resource drain and the larger the chance of useful resource overload.

Gantt charts supply a strategy to examine course of useful resource wants and make changes that assist maintain initiatives on monitor.

Whereas each Gantt chart differs, widespread options embrace job, taskbars, and milestones due dates. Charts may embrace sub-task bars or use bar shading to point how far a job has progressed.

How one can Create Gantt Charts in Excel

Regardless of their usefulness and ubiquity, Gantt charts don’t have a built-in template in Excel. Consequently, customers have to both obtain a pre-built Gantt chart or construct their very own.

Right here’s a step-by-step information to making a Gantt chart in Excel.

1. Enter your undertaking knowledge.

Step one in making a Gantt chart is getting into undertaking knowledge right into a typical Excel spreadsheet. In our instance, we are going to enter three knowledge columns: Process Identify, Begin on Day, and Length. The consequence ought to look one thing like this.

2. Make a stacked bar chart.

Subsequent, we’re going to create a stacked bar chart. To do that, choose the info within the Begin on Day column (with the header). Then, below “Insert,” choose “Bar Chart”, then “2-D Bar”, then “Stacked Bar” to get this.

3. Enter your period knowledge.

To enter period knowledge:

• Begin by right-clicking on the chart.
• Select “Choose Information.” It will open a “Choose knowledge supply” window containing the “Begin on Day” sequence.
• Click on the “Add” Button below “Legend entries (sequence),” then title your new sequence Length.

Now, click on the icon subsequent to the place it says “Sequence values,” which is able to open a brand new “Edit sequence” window.

Choose the info out of your Length column (with out the header) and your Begin On Day column, then click on OK to shut the window, and click on OK once more so as to add the sequence to your chart.

4. Add your job descriptions.

Now we’re going so as to add job descriptions. This begins the identical manner because the final step: Proper-click in your chart to open the “Choose knowledge supply” window, then choose “Begin On Day” within the left-hand “Sequence” record.

Subsequent, choose “Edit” on the precise “Class” record. It will open an “Axis labels” window. Choose the cells in your Process column, then click on OK on the “Axis labels” window, then OK on the “Choose knowledge supply” window.

4. Repair the Order

Lastly, we’re going to repair the order of our duties. To do that, right-click on the record of Duties on the left aspect of the chart to open a menu, then click on “Format Axis.” From this menu, below “Axis Place,” verify the “classes in reverse order” field.

And there you’ve got it — a custom-built Gantt chart in Excel.

Gantt Chart Examples

In case you choose to obtain an current template, there are a number of Gantt choices within the Microsoft chart templates database. Some nice Gantt examples embrace: