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 exhibits time.

There’s no mounted unit for time — it could possibly be measured in weeks, days, hours, or minutes, relying on the duties you’re monitoring. In Excel, every process will get its personal row.

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

It’s value noting that duties can overlap — the aim of the Gantt chart isn’t to find out the order of duties however to offer a straightforward approach to see what’s occurring, when, and what number of processes are occurring directly.

The Advantages of Gantt Charts

Gantt charts supply a number of advantages, together with the next.

At-a-Look Mission 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 could trigger friction.

Actionable Perception

These charts additionally present actionable perception for venture administration employees. As a result of groups can see venture begin dates and timelines at-a-glance, they’ll pinpoint potential bottlenecks and make modifications.

In follow, groups would possibly uncover that three processes are because of begin on the identical day. By staggering begin dates barely, they’ll 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 crew chargeable for them. If left alone, this venture framework might waste time, as one crew is overworked, and others could not have sufficient on their plate.

A greater understanding of what’s occurring, when, and why may help firms enhance their time administration.

Diminished Threat of Useful resource Overload

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

Gantt charts supply a approach to examine course of useful resource wants and make changes that assist maintain initiatives on observe.

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

Methods to Create Gantt Charts in Excel

Regardless of their usefulness and ubiquity, Gantt charts don’t have a built-in template in Excel. In consequence, 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 venture knowledge.

Step one in making a Gantt chart is coming into venture knowledge right into a typical Excel spreadsheet. In our instance, we’ll enter three knowledge columns: Job Title, Begin on Day, and Period. The end result 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 information within the Begin on Day column (with the header). Then, beneath “Insert,” choose “Bar Chart”, then “2-D Bar”, then “Stacked Bar” to get this.

3. Enter your length knowledge.

To enter length knowledge:

• Begin by right-clicking on the chart.
• Select “Choose Knowledge.” This can open a “Choose knowledge supply” window containing the “Begin on Day” collection.
• Click on the “Add” Button beneath “Legend entries (collection),” then title your new collection Period.

Now, click on the icon subsequent to the place it says “Sequence values,” which is able to open a brand new “Edit collection” window.

Choose the information out of your Period 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 collection to your chart.

4. Add your process descriptions.

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

Subsequent, choose “Edit” on the suitable “Class” record. This can open an “Axis labels” window. Choose the cells in your Job column, then click on OK on the “Axis labels” window, then OK on the “Choose knowledge supply” window.

4. Repair the Order

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

And there you have got it — a custom-built Gantt chart in Excel.

Gantt Chart Examples

Should you desire to obtain an present template, there are a number of Gantt choices within the Microsoft chart templates database. Some nice Gantt examples embody: