Easy methods to Create Gantt Charts in Excel

What are Gantt charts?

On the left-hand facet, 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 activity will get its personal row.

As you possibly can see within the instance above from Microsoft, activity 1 begins at time unit 0 and runs till simply earlier than activity 2, which proceeds till activity 3 begins.

It’s price 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 provide 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 doable to higher perceive how lengthy processes will take and if concurrent processes might trigger friction.

Actionable Perception

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

In apply, groups would possibly uncover that three processes are on account of begin on the identical day. By staggering begin dates barely, they will keep away from doable efficiency points.

Improved Time Administration

Take into account a Gantt chart exhibiting a number of duties with the identical begin date and workforce accountable for them. If left alone, this mission framework might waste time, as one workforce is overworked, and others might not have sufficient on their plate.

A greater understanding of what’s occurring, when, and why can assist corporations enhance their time administration.

Decreased Danger of Useful resource Overload

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

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

Whereas each Gantt chart differs, frequent options embody activity, taskbars, and milestones due dates. Charts can also embody sub-task bars or use bar shading to point how far a activity has progressed.

Easy methods to Create Gantt Charts in Excel

Regardless of their usefulness and ubiquity, Gantt charts don’t have a built-in template in Excel. Because of this, customers must 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 mission information.

Step one in making a Gantt chart is coming into mission information right into a typical Excel spreadsheet. In our instance, we’ll enter three information columns: Process Title, 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, underneath “Insert,” choose “Bar Chart”, then “2-D Bar”, then “Stacked Bar” to get this.

3. Enter your period information.

To enter period information:

• Begin by right-clicking on the chart.
• Select “Choose Knowledge.” This may open a “Choose information supply” window containing the “Begin on Day” sequence.
• Click on the “Add” Button underneath “Legend entries (sequence),” then title your new sequence Length.

Now, click on the icon subsequent to the place it says “Sequence values,” which can 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 activity descriptions.

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

Subsequent, choose “Edit” on the appropriate “Class” checklist. This may 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 information supply” window.

4. Repair the Order

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

And there you will have 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 embody: