GANTT CHARTS & TIMELINES
Named after their inventor, Henry L. Gantt, Gantt charts provide a clear and concise way to plan, track, and manage various tasks within a project.
Together with more simple timelines, they are widely used across industries for their ability to display task dependencies, deadlines, and resource allocation, making them an essential asset for project managers and teams.
GANTT CHARTS
ABOUT GANTT CHARTS
One of the key features of Gantt charts is their ability to break down complex projects into manageable tasks and subtasks.
Each task is represented as a horizontal bar, with its length indicating its duration, and its position on the timeline showing when it starts and ends.
Additionally, Gantt charts allow you to assign responsible team members to each task, making it easy to track individual responsibilities and ensure accountability.
A REAL CHALLENGE IN MICROSOFT 365
There is no Gantt chart in Microsoft 365 (PowerPoint, Excel, Word). So users usually attempt to draw Gantt charts by manually creating shapes and positioning them as a Gantt. Sometimes, a table is used to color cells.
But to paraphrase H. von Moltke, "No plan survives contact with reality". Manual approaches are very tedious, because every time something needs to be adjusted in the plan, there are dozens of shapes or cells to move and recolor.
THE SOLUTION: INSERTING A GANTT CHART OE TIMELINE WITH POWER-USER
With the Power-user add-in, you can instantly insert Gantt charts or timelines in PowerPoint, Excel or Word from the Content Library.
These charts are real chart objects, so they will adjust automatically when your plan needs to be updated. They will be easier to create, edit and format, saving you time and ensuring that your plan remains very visual.
A GANTT CHART IN POWERPOINT
Plan with flexibility
Quickly plan your project by adding any number of tasks to the Gantt chart, and organize them in groups to better structure the plan. Then add milestones to show key dates for the project.
Define relationships
Easily define the dependencies between your tasks by editing the Gantt in Excel.
This way, if 1 task is late, the impact on all depending tasks will automatically be shown on the Gantt.
Plan it all, show only the relevant
Grey out completed tasks to keep the eye focused on what's next.
Display the current date automatically. Show only a portion of the plan between 2 dates, hiding what's not currently relevant.
Format with flexibility
With our Gantt chart, you can apply any of the chart formatting options from Microsoft 365. Change colors, fonts, spaces and more very easily.
TIMELINE CHARTS
Timelines created manually
Most people create timelines in PowerPoint using oval shapes, manually positioned on a line.
While this approach is fine, it lacks flexibility as shapes need to be moved manually when a date is added or changed.
It also doesn't reflect the proportionality of time between 2 dates.
Timeline charts from Power-user
Timeline charts inserted from your Power-user Library will automatically update based on the list of dates and description from the Excel table.
You can then easily apply the format of your choosing, like for any other PowerPoint chart.
A TIMELINE CHART IN POWERPOINT
