What’s wrong with GANTT Charts?

The ubiquitous Gantt chart is regularly attributed to Henry Gantt (1861–1919) who is thought to have developed it around 1910-1915.

It almost certainly predated Henry Gantt in some shape or form by a decade or two. Karol Adamieki, a Polish economist, engineer and management researcher developed something similar around 1896.

The earliest versions were drawn on paper and strips of paper were placed and replaced on the chart around manually.

Software generated Gantt charts appeared around the mid-1980s. The software that generated Gantt charts proceeded to grow in sophistication. This enabled capabilities such as baselining, critical path analysis and rich statistical modelling. Nevertheless, these were all inputs to the published Gantt chart which remains largely unchanged to this day.

During this period the cathode ray tube, carburettors, CFCs and the incandescent bulb have all gone the way of all things. The internal combustion engine will probably join the list shortly too.

The staying power of the Gantt chart is as remarkable as its many failings. It has not prospered because of its brilliance. It has prospered because nothing better has been found.

Such is the breadth of the Gantt chart’s shortcomings, it’s actually a little hard to know where to begin but – begin I will.

There is no standard for how a Gantt chart should be presented and set out. This means that no two Gantt charts can ever be relied upon to present information consistently.

Most of a Gantt chart is blank space. That’s not great in any setting but it effectively denies mobile platforms the opportunity to display Gantt charts. This is a frustration particularly as mobile platforms are where they would potentially be of most value.

A Gantt chart may show you whether a project is on schedule (or show you what its author wanted you to see). It won’t show whether a project is on budget. It won’t show you the purpose of the project or the when the investment’s benefits will be realised or even what they are.

There is no opportunity to see what is going on in parallel with a given project elsewhere in the portfolio.

Gantt charts don’t scale usefully. There is no place for A0 sized plots or the hardware to produce them in 2021

The lack of information able to be presented on a Gantt chart means that typically a range of supporting collateral has to be produced and kept synchronised. This is complex, costly and error prone.

I could go on but don’t take my word for it you can read more in “Gantt charts revisited: A critical analysis of its roots and implications to the management of projects today“

Omnivisto have spoken to PPM practitioners with a considerable breadth and depth of experience on this subject. Amazingly little feedback was received extolling the merits of the Gantt chart.

There is an extensive canon of project management literature from which to draw upon but nowhere in that literature is there an alternative. The Gantt chart is nigh on a ubiquitous universal constant. Those seeking an alternative will find remarkably slim pickings to choose from.

There may never be a universal consensus on what project success is or is not. Nor perhaps on whether the data published on the causes of project failure can be relied upon. But irrespective of these two things, the Gantt chart stands alone as the omnipresent actor in all project failures. Like the ever lurking serial killer in a Netflix dramatization, the finger of blame always manages to point somewhere else. At least until series 3.

Barnaby Davies is a project and programme management professional. Omnivisto is a company with a bright vision for how portfolios and programmes can be tracked, managed and delivered.