Available in: Enterprise, Premier, Professional, and Teams
Overview
Mavenlink's Gantt chart converts your project plan into a graphical representation of the entire project lifecycle. When leveraged in team meetings, it enhances accountability and communication, demonstrating how individual efforts affect the outcome of tasks and productivity of other team members.
In addition, clients will be able to see how scope shifts as project plans change.
The Gantt chart gives you the ability to:
- Check the overall health of up to 500 projects.
- Establish dependencies between tasks in a project.
- Expose potential pitfalls, giving you the ability to rescope and reschedule.
- Create baselines and snapshots to show how the scope of your project shifts over time.
- Instantly view your project’s duration, budget, burn rate, and more.
There are two types of Gantt charts available in Mavenlink:
- Global Gantt chart —This gives you a high-level view of your active projects, providing a visual comparison between scheduled and actual dates.
- Local Gantt chart —This presents a more detailed look at each of your projects and the current status of all tasks and subtasks.
The Gantt chart is separated into two sections, with either the Project or Task list on the left and the Schedule on the right.
The Project and Task Lists
The columns in the Project or Task list contain information relevant to your projects. Some columns are initially hidden, so you'll have to adjust the vertical line that divides the list from the chart to see everything.
You can reorder a column by clicking on the column header and dragging it to a new position.
You can also sort information in ascending or descending order by clicking on the column header. Alternately, you can click on the black arrow on the right of the header and select Sort Ascending or Sort Descending from the corresponding drop-down menu. The small, blue arrow that appears next to the column name will indicate which direction it's sorted.
If you want to hide or show columns, just click the black arrow on the right of the header, hover over Columns, and check or clear the corresponding boxes.
Gantt Chart Schedule
The Schedule section to the right of the Project or Task list depicts the lifecycle of your project plan. To get a more complete view of the Schedule, click on the twin arrows on the right of the Projects or Tasks header to collapse the panel.
The colored bars on the Schedule represent the project timeline for each corresponding project or task in the list.
- Green—Deadlines are being met; everything is healthy.
- Red—The project or task has not been started or completed before the deadline.
- Blue—The project or task has been completed.
The filled-in area of a bar represents the percentage of the task or project that has been completed. Hover over any of the bars to see the scheduled Start and End dates, the Duration, Status, and % Done.
There are several view options available for both the Global Gantt and Local Gantt chart. In the timeline header, you can select Week, Month, or Year to move in or out on the timeline. When you want to see all your active projects or tasks at once, click Zoom to Fit.
Regardless of where you are on the timeline, you can click Default View at any time to return to the original view. This button also functions as a refresh button; click it to update the chart and see recent changes when multiple people are simultaneously working in the Gantt chart.
Related Articles:
Step-by-Step:
