Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts)
Hello everyone,
I am a Project Manager for construction projects, and I have just been hired to help with the planning and oversight of a $100 million construction project. My primary task at the moment is to make sense of the schedule, milestones, critical path, and, in general, make a very complicated project more comprehensible.
Yesterday I received the current schedule, which was done in MS Project (Gantt view), and is now 770 lines (18 pages). Gantt charts have a lot of good qualities, but at this size they are very hard to read.
After thinking about it for a minute, I realized I have never seen a construction schedule that I would consider an "excellent visual diagram."
Does anyone have any ideas for me?
Hella good discussion by (the Man) Edward Tufte and a dozen or so really good experts on GANTT and PERT charts and managing large projects.
[ Fascinating. I find myself struggling with this all the time. I'm glad to know i'm not the only one who can't seem to wrangle MS Project into something approaching complete. Project management is non-trivial in practice and the IT toolset really just isn't there (even now, four years after this discussion began). -k]
