Bar Chart - Scheduling

A pictorial chart also known as the bar chart was developed by Henry L. Gantt around 1990 and is used to deal with complex activities. Out of the various tools or techniques of project management bar charts technique was probably one of the earliest one. A bar chart consists of two co ordinate axes one ( usually horizontal axis) represents the time elapsed and the other ( vertical axis) represents the jobs or activities to be performed. Each bar represents specific job or activity of the project. The beginning and end of each bar represents the time of start and time of finish of that activity. The length of the bar shows the time required for the completion of the job or activity.

Mostly, in every project there are some jobs activities which can take place concurrently while there are some activities that succeed a preceding activity and cannot be started unless the proceeding activity is complete. Hence in a bar chart some of the bars are run parallel or overlap each other time wise and some run serially with one bar beginning after another bar ends.