The history of Gantt charts
Henry Gantt needed a way for his team’s leaders to track project progress at a glance. The early-20th-century mechanical engineer needed more than lists and simple charts to keep tabs on projects—he wanted a clear visual timeline to enable better planning and tracking. Regular status meetings and logbooks were inefficient and error-prone, making it difficult to identify delays or mishaps. Between 1910 and 1915, Gantt invented his eponymous chart, making project coordination less manual and more visual. The Gantt chart didn’t just illustrate project process—it revolutionized project management altogether. The chart’s first major application was in World War I, when it was employed to optimize production processes for military supplies, helping ensure that tasks stayed on schedule to meet critical deadlines. Since, Gantt Charts have been used in the process of major engineering projects, such as:
- The Hoover Dam
- NASA’s Apollo program
- The Channel Tunnel
While the earliest Gantt charts were drawn by hand, the emergence of personal computers allowed for the widespread creation of complex Gantt charts. Today, they are widely used across various industries for project management—and with modern project management software, they can be easily updated in real time, making them particularly useful for Agile teams.
What is an Agile Gantt chart
An Agile Gantt chart is a project management tool that combines the visual timeline of traditional Gantt charts with the flexibility of agile methodologies. The detailed bar chart helps teams map out tasks, sprints, and dependencies, providing a high-level view of project progress while allowing for iterative planning and adjustments. Agile Gantt charts enable teams to maintain a structured schedule while adapting to changing requirements, making it easier to track milestones and optimize resource allocation throughout the project.
Agile process vs. Waterfall process
Agile processes are incremental. They prioritize iterative development, using sprints of various durations to rapidly develop and fine-tune products. Waterfall processes, on the other hand, are linear—they move forward with little opportunity for backtracking. Both are project management methodologies, but Agile favors cycles over stages, while Waterfall relies on sequential phases, each dependent on the completion of the last.
How can Agile teams use Gantt charts?
While Gantt charts are often associated with Waterfall methodology, they can also be a great tool for Agile teams. Agile Gantt charts can help teams break down large projects into smaller tasks that can be changed on a dime. These collaborative tools help enhance communication, allowing for teams to monitor workloads, adjust plans, and allocate resources efficiently and effectively.
Managing tasks in Agile
In Agile project management, Gantt charts can map out sprints, helping team members visualize tasks within each iteration. Even though the Agile framework prioritizes flexibility, using Gantt charts can help maintain a high-level view of the project roadmap, enabling better planning while accommodating changes.
As a collaboration tool
Agile Gantt charts facilitate collaboration by providing a shared visual representation of the project schedule. Team members can easily see who is responsible for specific tasks, track task completion, and understand how their work impacts other aspects of the project. This shared view enhances communication and helps identify potential obstacles early on, making it easier for teams to coordinate and keep the project on track.
Monitor and review resource allocation
Robust resource management is paramount in Agile, and Gantt charts can help teams allocate resources efficiently by showing assignments and workloads over time. Teams can quickly spot when individuals are overloaded or underutilized and reassign tasks to balance workloads. Agile Gantt charts help teams remain nimble and adaptable, even as project demands shift.
When to use an Agile Gantt chart
An Agile Gantt chart is useful when a team needs to balance long-term planning with short-term flexibility, helping to visualize the project timeline while accommodating iterative changes. Today, rather than seeing a single team working hard on a product with a short turnover time, you’ll find several geographically dispersed teams engaged in the development of complex n-tier system architectures. In the case of IoT product development, for example, managers will try to orchestrate the parallel development lifecycles of hardware, software and service components. These longer-term projects that require tracking multiple sprints, dependencies, and milestones across different teams can greatly benefit from Agile Gantt charts. Milestones often include software releases—meaning teams can track collaboration in real time to ensure a smooth and timely launch. These charts are also valuable when managing projects with complex requirements or varying workloads, as they help monitor resource allocation and adjust tasks as needed.
What are the benefits of using Gantt charts with Agile methodology?
Gantt charts provide organizations with a bird’s-eye view of projects, making it easy for team members to check progress at a glance.
How to use Agile Gantt charts
Before creating an Agile Gantt chart to help track project progress, it’s important to zoom out and examine your overall goals and timelines. What is the technical complexity of the project? Are there any critical dates that cannot be missed? How prepared is your current team to meet the goals of the tasks at hand? What challenges might you expect to face? Considering your team’s situation holistically is key to creating an effective Gantt chart.
Create one task per sprint
Under each iteration, create a single task item. Make sure to account for dependencies—for example, if the development team cannot start testing a new feature until the coding phase is complete, it’s important to connect those two items within the chart.
Rearrange dependencies
Move tasks throughout the plan based on the dependencies you identified. Some tasks might move forward or back to accommodate the realistic needs of the sprint.
Review each iteration daily
Agile teams use daily standup meetings to discuss an iteration’s progress. These meetings are a good time to review Gantt chart updates and make adjustments where necessary.
The management standpoint
From a program management point of view, Gantt diagrams offer significant benefits in system-of-systems development. Even if the chart is only updated regularly rather than continuously, it provides process insights to higher management, who might prefer a high-level view of the entire product lifecycle rather than focusing on individual development streams.
While burndown charts—which focus on the amount of work remaining in any given project—remain the go-to tool at the team level, Gantt charts help bridge the gap by offering a clear view of timelines, dependencies, and progress. This makes them a useful complement to burndown charts, enabling management to better interpret project status and ensure alignment with overall timeline estimates.
Searching for the best Agile ALM platform for your needs?
Not all ALM platforms have the flexibility to support true Agile processes. Codebeamer contains all-in-one requirements, risk, and test management capabilities to holistically connect people across roles and processes throughout the software delivery lifecycle. And with full Agile capabilities, organizations can plan, track, and manage project progress using the built-in planner, Gantt charts, kanban boards, and release systems. Codebeamer’s interactive Gantt charts not only provide statistics and project overviews, but also allow teams to easily edit releases with a user-friendly drag-and-drop functionality. Once a change is made, all dependencies and affected releases or sprints will automatically be updated as well. This comprehensive approach ensures that teams can adapt quickly to changing requirements while maintaining alignment and visibility across the entire project.
Agile and Waterfall processes are usually thought of as two vastly different concepts. But often, they can be combined to leverage a best-of-both approach, especially when it comes to the development of hardware, software, and service components. Agile Gantt charts help teams adopt this hybrid methodology by offering a structured yet flexible planning tool that accommodates both iterative cycles and sequential phases.
A Hybrid Approach to Software Development
To learn more about implementing an Agile-Waterfall hybrid in your projects, explore our brochure for a ready-to-use template that streamlines the process.
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