How to Create Gantt Charts in Excel

Microsoft Excel stays the go-to possibility for a lot of companies to carry out information calculations and create charts primarily based on the outcomes.

The Gantt chart is a helpful information that isn’t naturally accessible in Excel. Nice for venture administration and milestone monitoring, Gantt charts may help firms higher visualize operations and streamline present processes.

On this piece, we’ll dive into the fundamentals of Gantt charts and discover their advantages, then present a step-by-step information to creating them in Excel, together with some helpful examples. Earlier than lengthy, you’ll have the ability to use Excel like a professional.

What are Gantt charts?

The Advantages of Gantt Charts

How you can Create Gantt Charts in Excel

Gantt Chart Examples

What are Gantt charts?

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

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

The Advantages of Gantt Charts

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

At-a-Look Undertaking 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 venture administration employees. As a result of groups can see venture begin dates and timelines at-a-glance, they will pinpoint potential bottlenecks and make adjustments.

In observe, groups may 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

Think about a Gantt chart exhibiting a number of duties with the identical begin date and crew accountable for them. If left alone, this venture framework may waste time, as one crew is overworked, and others might not have sufficient on their plate.

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

Lowered Danger of Useful resource Overload

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

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

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

How you can 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 venture information.

Step one in making a Gantt chart is getting into venture information right into a typical Excel spreadsheet. In our instance, we are going to enter three information columns: Job Identify, Begin on Day, and Period. The outcome 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 period information.

To enter period information:

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

Now, click on the icon subsequent to the place it says “Collection values,” which can open a brand new “Edit sequence” 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 sequence to your chart.

4. Add your activity descriptions.

Now we’re going so as to add activity descriptions. This begins the identical means 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 “Collection” listing.

Subsequent, choose “Edit” on the precise “Class” listing. 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 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 listing of Duties on the left aspect 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 will have it — a custom-built Gantt chart in Excel.

Gantt Chart Examples

For those who want to obtain an present template, there are a number of Gantt choices within the Microsoft chart templates database. Some nice Gantt examples embody:

Date Monitoring Gantt Chart

This Information Monitoring Gantt chart template is totally customizable with your individual photos, titles, and textual content. It provides a straightforward approach to observe key duties with out having to construct your Gantt chart from the bottom up.

What we like: This Gantt chart is straightforward and streamlined. It has loads of room for duties, begin dates, and durations that will help you higher handle duties.

Easy Gantt ChartThis Easy Gantt chart is precisely that: Easy and simple to know. It may also be tailor-made to totally different person teams, akin to workers, managers, and stakeholders. You possibly can embody photographs, graphics, or new fonts.

What we like: Along with primary activity info, this chart additionally provides the power to interrupt initiatives down by phases (denoted by the different-colored sections) and who’s accountable for every activity.

Agile Gantt Chart

This Agile Gantt chart instance supplies color-code activity classes and visible reminders to assist Agile groups meet deadlines.

Given the continued suggestions loop that underpins Agile methodology, Gantt charts akin to this are instrumental in activity monitoring.

What we like: The colour-coded bars present rapid visible suggestions, whereas the power to shortly publish and share this chart in Excel helps enhance crew collaboration.

Going the Distance with Gantt

Gantt charts are a good way to trace venture schedules and see at-a-glance the place overlaps happen and the place it could be essential to make schedule adjustments.

Whereas Microsoft Excel doesn’t include a built-in Gantt generator, you’ll be able to go the gap with Gantt charts by constructing your individual from scratch with our step-by-step information or downloading an Excel template that allows you to customise information and headings on demand.