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2/21/2016

A Gantt chart can be defined as chart which is commonly used in management of projects in showing activities and the time in which those activities are taking place (Collins, 2010), Gantt chart usually shows the project start and finish dates, it is useful in a project since it helps in planning, coordination, and tracking of specific activities in a project. On the other hand, PERT, which stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique is a tool used in project management to organize, coordinate and schedule tasks within a project. PERT was developed by the US military while the Gantt chart was developed by Henry Gantt.

From the Gantt chart, everything is straight forward. Each task is listed individual from application planning to implementation and maintenance. The Gantt charts contains information informs of bar charts which shows the task, the Gantt charts also contains red strips which shows which percentage of the task has been completed and also those project activities which have not yet started for example it shows only one percent of Project/application activity have been completed and also show zero percent on Application analysis and requirements since the activity has not even started, from the Gantt chart each application development activity is handled separately. On the other hand, the PERT chart contain network diagrams, each task is represented sequentially as they branch from one other thus they are indicating which order they must follow and how they are interrelated example System developers activity follows after analysis and requirements definition is complete since system developers are branching out of the application analysis and definition task. PERT chart is made up of parallelograms which contain information title of the task, start and finish date and also the percentage completed (Happy, 2010). They also have crossed diagonal line showing a task has already started but not yet completed; others have two diagonal line which has drawn through nodes indicating a task is completed the other have no diagonal lines indicating the tasks have not yet started (Happy, 2010).

Both Gantt chart and PERT help a manage coordinates all his activities so that he can complete a project, but both of them have advantages that the other do not have, the advantages of using are; Gantt chart is good for small projects where there is no complexity, They also provide an opportunity to project manager to present each task of the project by providing ability to list goals and allocation of various resources. The other advantage of Gantt chart is that they can be used in status reporting since they display the progress of an activity in the same bars. On the other hand, PERT has the following benefits that the Gantt chart do not offer; PERT explicitly defines dependencies and makes them visible between work breakdown structure(WBS) elements, it also encourages the identifying of the critical path of the project and identifying early and late starts and slack for each task. It is always appropriate to use the Gantt chart when the project is small and not complex. PERT chart should be used in mission critical projects and risky project since they provide the project manager with critical paths which must be followed.

A critical path in project management is all the tasks in a project that will determine when the project will end, if one of the tasks in the critical path is delayed by one day then the project duration is extended by one day (Meredith, 2014). The main importance of a critical path to project managers is to help them know the important activities of a project which makes it easier to the managers to plan and visualize their work accordingly.

Gantt chart

PERT chart

From the Gantt chart and the PERT the application development project is not going as planned since one of the crucial activity is behind schedule, and this activity is affecting other tasks which are depending on it to be completed so they can start. All the other tasks are taking place as planned and some have a certain percentage which is complete.

REFERENCES Collins, R. J. (2010). Project management. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Happy, R. (2010). Microsoft Project 2010 project management : real world skills for certification and beyond. Indianapolis, Ind: Wiley. Meredith, J. R. (2014). Project management in practice. Hoboken: John Wiley.