Gantt and Pert Charts

Gantt Charts

• 
  
• - bar charts
  - time shedules
  - start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project
  - breakdown structure of project
  - show dependency (i.e., precedence network) relationships between activities
  - show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line as shown here

Pert Charts

- stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique
- project management tool used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project
- methodology developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s to manage the Polaris submarine missile program
- presents a graphic illustration of a project
- presented as a network diagram
- consists of numbered nodes (either circles or rectangles) representing events, or milestones in the project linked by labelled vectors (directional lines) representing tasks in the project
- direction of arrows on lines shows sequence of tasks
- In the diagram, for example, the tasks between nodes 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 must be completed in sequence
- these are called dependent or serial tasks
- the tasks between nodes 1 and 2, and nodes 1 and 3 are not dependent on the completion of one to start the other and can be undertaken simultaneously
- these tasks are called parallel or concurrent tasks
- tasks that must be completed in sequence but that don't require resources or completion time are considered to have event dependency
- these are represented by dotted lines with arrows and are called dummy activities
- for example, the dashed arrow linking nodes 6 and 9 indicates that the system files must be converted before the user test can take place, but that the resources and time required to prepare for the user test (writing the user manual and user training) are on another path
- numbers on the opposite sides of the vectors indicate the time allotted for the task
(http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/PERT-chart)