Ganttkaavion

Ganttkaavion is a type of bar chart used in project management to illustrate a project schedule. It presents tasks or work packages on one axis and time on the other, with horizontal bars showing the planned start and end dates. The length of each bar indicates duration, and the position reflects when the work is scheduled to occur. Dependencies between tasks are often shown with arrows, and milestones may be marked with special symbols. Ganttkaaviot provide a visual overview that helps plan, coordinate, and monitor progress.

A typical Ganttkaavion includes tasks, durations, start and finish dates, dependencies, and progress indicators. Additional elements may cover assigned resources, milestones, baselines, and notes. In practice, these diagrams can be drawn by hand or generated by software, offering features such as filtering, rescheduling, and comparison against baselines. Modern tools may integrate with calendars, issue tracking, and resource leveling to improve accuracy.

History and terminology: the Ganttkaavion concept is named after Henry L. Gantt, who popularized the chart in the 1910s as a means to visualize production schedules. The term is used in Estonian-language contexts as a translation of the standard Gantt chart.

Applications and limitations: Ganttkaavions are widely used in construction, software development, event planning, and manufacturing to convey task sequences and timing. They are most effective for moderate-sized projects; for very large or highly complex projects, they may become cluttered unless filtered or subdivided, and they do not inherently optimize resource allocation.

See also: PERT, critical path method, work breakdown structure, resource leveling.