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Is anyone using gantt[1] charts? I've been using them for product planning for years. I know the kanban style planners are all the rage but I like the procedura

by yardie 10y ago

Is anyone using gantt[1] charts? I've been using them for product planning for years. I know the kanban style planners are all the rage but I like the proceduralness of having the entire project laid out in front of me. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

UK-AL 10y ago
Gnantt charts force you to plan the entire thing up front. That's at odds with the more agile way people develop software today. Plus they almost never match up to reality. Good for planning the sequence of things, but don't expect them to be accurate over the long term.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Gantt charts are great for showing task dependencies, but I agree that they rarely predict task length correctly.
- exclusiv 10y ago
  Agreed although we typically ensure we have plenty of tasks in parallel so one missed item doesn't throw off the whole schedule. Our Gantt charts are therefore ugly. :)
1123581321 10y ago
Some of my coworkers use them. They aren't helpful tools for actual planning, but they look organized and that appearance helps sell projects to internal and external customers.
- tacos 10y ago
  Gantt charts are tools for planning and scheduling. It got Hoover Dam done two years ahead of schedule. It'll probably be useful for your Rails app, too.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    Yes, they work well in operations that have many parallel steps which must be performed once, correctly, and in the correct time and order, and where the effort is quantifiable. While Hoover Dam was constructed on an unprecedented scale, the project planners could still do reliable man-hour calculations for many parts of the project. Most software development projects lack those properties. Many software projects live or die by how well the "last 90%" of development goes (as opposed to a public works project which has much more critical initial work), but a Gantt chart usually represents that entire effort with one bar.
    - tacos 10y ago
      It's a bar chart; you're free to plot whatever subset of data you wish. If you're working with a team and you can't represent at least the next few weeks on a Gantt chart you're not engineering--you're playing software bumper cars. Having team members sign up for brief work items (2-3 days max), charting it out, then watching where it strains is useful and often humbling.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Yes, they are useful. I like the ability to use TaskJuggler, a Ruby program, where you can edit the project info via your favorite text editor, then run TJ against it to produce various reports. The nice thing about Gantt is that it can show up your expectations as being too optimistic, very quickly.

by yardie 10y ago

UK-AL 10y ago

Gnantt charts force you to plan the entire thing up front. That's at odds with the more agile way people develop software today. Plus they almost never match up to reality. Good for planning the sequence of things, but don't expect them to be accurate over the long term.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Gantt charts are great for showing task dependencies, but I agree that they rarely predict task length correctly.
exclusiv 10y ago
Agreed although we typically ensure we have plenty of tasks in parallel so one missed item doesn't throw off the whole schedule. Our Gantt charts are therefore ugly. :)

1123581321 10y ago

Some of my coworkers use them. They aren't helpful tools for actual planning, but they look organized and that appearance helps sell projects to internal and external customers.

tacos 10y ago
Gantt charts are tools for planning and scheduling. It got Hoover Dam done two years ahead of schedule. It'll probably be useful for your Rails app, too.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  Yes, they work well in operations that have many parallel steps which must be performed once, correctly, and in the correct time and order, and where the effort is quantifiable. While Hoover Dam was constructed on an unprecedented scale, the project planners could still do reliable man-hour calculations for many parts of the project. Most software development projects lack those properties. Many software projects live or die by how well the "last 90%" of development goes (as opposed to a public works project which has much more critical initial work), but a Gantt chart usually represents that entire effort with one bar.
  - tacos 10y ago
    It's a bar chart; you're free to plot whatever subset of data you wish. If you're working with a team and you can't represent at least the next few weeks on a Gantt chart you're not engineering--you're playing software bumper cars. Having team members sign up for brief work items (2-3 days max), charting it out, then watching where it strains is useful and often humbling.

patrickg_zill 10y ago

Yes, they are useful. I like the ability to use TaskJuggler, a Ruby program, where you can edit the project info via your favorite text editor, then run TJ against it to produce various reports. The nice thing about Gantt is that it can show up your expectations as being too optimistic, very quickly.