WBS/Gantt Charts - A Presentation for Project Management

When constructing a WBS I used the "shuns" in order.
-identification: identify the tasks
-duration: assign a duration to each task
-relation: establish relationships among tasks and add summary tasks to help organize work
-allocation: allocate resources to each task
-resolution: resolve schedule and resource conflicts

Also used the Gantt chart quite a bit in the process improvement business. It's a great visual for process improvement teams and managers to "see" the process and begin to evaluate where it might be improved. Good project management software also helps calculate the actual cost of resources used in the process, often getting senior management's attention. Microsoft Project allows the traditional bar view of the process and allows a "network view" that looks a lot like a traditional process map.

Note of video: Narrator called it a "nat" chart. Every other Project Management or Process Improvement presentation I've ever seen calls it a "gant" chart. Wikipedia shows a pronunciation guide for Mr. Gantt's name that support the pronunciation I'm used to.

We've used them a lot in construction and they can help a lot on complex jobs. Linking the financial strings to the activities helps a lot in progress payments. The big thing to remember is there is the schedule, the way it should really go, and the way it winds up going. If you're overlocked into it, there's no flexibility to make reality adjustments. If you're too loose, there's demurrage on all the downtime of equipment and people. So it's very much an artistic as well as an analytical dance. There's a tendency to make the schedule boss when the human needs to be the boss. It's a tool that gives the human boss a way to keep things sorted, track labor, material, and equipment assignments and when run real time, you can see better where the future pucker factors will be. We used Primavera a lot. In some areas it's more powerful than you need, but when you needed the power, it was there. The other thing is you can get a grip on the what ifs. Am I better off double shifting this activity in the long run? That's one of the first things if you need to free up some float on something that's headed critical. That's done a lot if a specialty service that is only available for that one week to be able to get in and out but it's winter and they have to go through Detroit airport. It can help the odds but not guarantee them.

The visuals for Critical Path makes it look like the follow-on events shrink if an activity goes long. It should push the follow-on events right, since it makes the project longer.
Durations can be estimated, but the person doing the work will be the best source for durations. I never build a schedule on my own.