I agree that would be useful. So would accurately estimating the duration of a software project. And so would identifying the critical path, knowing what each t

I agree that would be useful. So would accurately estimating the duration of a software project. And so would identifying the critical path, knowing what each team member can accomplish, and knowing the inevitable obstacles and unknown unknowns up front. If anyone knew how to reliably estimate software projects, identify the critical path, and deliver on time they would get rich for solving a previously intractable problem. In 40 years in the business I have never seen this work, no matter how talented the team and project manager. I'm not saying it can't work, just that I have not seen it happen and I am not aware of any technique. In any software project the individual personalities and team dynamics drive the project and set the pace. How do you express that on a Gantt chart? Unexpected things come up because no one can plan a non-trivial project with complete and consistent requirements. The only approach I know that mostly works is incremental development. Set shorter targets and deliverables specified well enough that the team can give realistic estimates. Do that (call it a sprint if you want), regroup, adjust velocity based on what you learn. Software projects often have what looks like a fast pace and lots of progress early on, then bog down so that the team spends 90% of the actual time on the last 10% of the schedule. Incremental development (I won't call it agile because that means almost nothing anymore) at least gives you forward progress and an increasing (rather than decreasing) ability to estimate time to finish. Good luck.