It was events away from the workplace which inspired me to write this edition of the blog. As we are now settling in to life in Cornwall we have been searching for a permanent home. Somewhat predictably, the house we have fallen for requires more than just a quick lick of paint!

On a positive note, this means that we can get the house just how we want it, but, and it is a big but, this also means that without careful planning it can soon become both timely and costly.

This is when I turned to that old planning friend, the Gantt chart. There are of course hundreds of different visual planning charts. The fact is, there are dozens of differing versions of the Gantt chart itself, but they all serve a common purpose – to enable the user to display work requirements over time. Allowing you to visualise your entire project from start to finish, and most importantly, see the projects progress and address possible delays.

Regardless of the type of project, from house renovation through to software development, you will need to follow a few steps to create an effective chart.

1. Break the project down into separate tasks

This step will probably take the longest—but, remember the more complete you are with the information at the outset of the project, the more accurate (and useful) your chart will be.

As an example, for my ‘project’ I could initially break down the work by trade (plumber, plasterer etc) and then identify all the tasks for each person.

2. Work out dependencies

This step determines how each task is connected to one another. Some elements of work will be independent, meaning they can be completed at any stage of the project, without impacting on any other task. Others need to be performed in a specific order. Put simply, you can’t paint a wall before it has been plastered! Lastly there are parallel tasks. These can be worked on at the same time as others, it‘s good to have as many of these as you can to keep your project moving.

3. Creating the timeline

Now you’ve got your project tasks, you need to allocate the appropriate amount of time to complete each step. Try to be as realistic as possible, consider setbacks and delays. Although you want the project completed as soon as possible, if you underestimate timescales it can leave people unable to start their dependent task. This can quickly snowball and impact everything further down the line.

Getting a productive, well-thought-out timeline gives you and your team a clear vision of the project’s progress.

4. Get your tasks in order

Along with correctly ordering the work items, you need to make sure that any dependent tasks don’t start before the previous has finished.

Successful Gantt charts incorporate the time it takes to complete each task with the way that each task is related to the others to create a realistic map of the project.

5. Building your chart

I’ll leave it up to you to choose which chart you go for, there are plenty of free templates to choose from, but you won’t go far wrong with the basic excel template.

6. Chart your progress

As the project moves forward, it will evolve and change, I’m sure that there will be unexpected ‘features’ we unearth during our renovation for example. Keep your chart updated and be sure to assess the project along the way. This way you can avoid costly delays by rescheduling later elements before they’re impacted.

Next time you have a major project, in or out of the workplace, consider creating a project chart. I can pretty much guarantee you will be surprised, by both how the timeline appears and more importantly, how it helps your productivity.