
Ask HN: Decent software for making Gantt charts? - dmd
Has anyone found or written any decent software for making Gantt charts? Something shiny perhaps? An alternative to Project?
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yannis
If you need highly complicated ones Primavera is the de facto standard.
However, read what Tufte has to say about them first:

 _Most of the Gantt charts are analytically thin, too simple, and lack
substantive detail. The charts should be more intense. At a minimum, the
charts should be annotated--for example, with to-do lists at particular points
on the grid. About half the charts show their thin data in heavy grid prisons.
For these charts the main visual statement is the administrative grid prison,
not the actual tasks contained by the grid._

See the discussion at Tufte [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=000076)

I do mine using LaTeXe!

~~~
ddoonie
Do you have a 'how to' for creating Gantt charts with Latex?? I use it for my
papers, but pretty much do the charts in excel..

~~~
yannis
You can use a package Martin-Kumm's is the easiest or you can use pgf/TikZ
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf/> and creative from prmitives.
Personally, I wrote some macro's to get what I wanted. I simplify mine as much
as possible and use a very light grey vertical grid for background. Whatever
you do don't spoil a good write-up with anything Excel!

The pgf/TikZ package is the best graphics package I have used. Just the fact
that it exists is a monument to TeX, Knuth and Lamport.

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jat850
Are you using the Gantt charts for anything related to programming tasks
(timelines for software completion, deliverables, etc)?

My experience in two recent projects using Gantt charts as part of timelining
has left me with a bitter taste for how they relate to actual concrete
programming tasks.

A key failure a number of our developers identified is code doesn't translate
well to a linear scale. It's nearly meaningless for me to tell my software
lead that a component is 80% "done" after a week, when the 80-90% gap could
take a month, and 90%-100% might not even be attainable. (I have a nearly
impossible time ever considering something 100% "done".)

Coupled with dependencies and "Waiting For" or "Requires", it feels entirely
like it's not an appropriate or truly representative model. This has led to
intense frustration and tensions. Most of the developers on my current project
dread the weekly Gantt chart update.

I most often find myself simply saying, "whatever I said component A was at
last week, add 1%". It leads to a massive disjoint as one moves further up the
management chain.

I realize this is a mini-railing against something you might not even be
intending to use them for. I also realize that our software company may not be
getting maximum utility out of the style of project management we use. I only
speak from a developer's perspective who has been frustrated time and again
when faced with something so horribly artificial-feeling.

 _edit_ For what it's worth, we use Microsoft Project. I've also used
dotproject for non-work related coding I've done, but never learned it fully
enough to speak to its capabilities or strengths and weakenesses.

~~~
yannis
I have been involved with Construction for over twenty years. We recently had
a Project with over 22,000 activities. Needless to say it became unmanageable
and no-one used it. Real construction is similar in many ways with the
development of software. One of the problems is reporting progress, in most
cases is like trying to measure microns with a yardstick, the granularity and
accuracy of the measuring instrument is not there.

On the above Project (a high-rise Tower) we came up with a graphic that had
little squares representing activities. The graphic looked similar to the
Tower:

    
    
             ---------
             | | | | |
             ---------
             | | | | |
             ---------
    

Using color, green for done and white for not done, you could have a snap of
progress at a glance. You set them side by side and you can see weekly
Progress.

I have been trying to refine the idea and make a start-up out of it:)

(You can think of software as a Tower as well!)

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pkaler
Hold up. Do you really need a Gantt chart? Would a graph built in
Excel/Numbers/GDocs be a better solution? Maybe a burn down chart. I have
never found Gantt charts all that useful.

------
lostbit
The other ones that came to my mind:

dotProject: <http://www.dotproject.net/>

Redmine: <http://www.redmine.org/>

qdPM: <http://qdpm.net/>

I ended up pointing to Project Management software, but they all do Gantts...

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nreece
I've used Gantt Designer - <http://timios.net/gantt/> before and it worked
pretty well. It's a scaled down version of MS Project in some ways, without
the clutter of full-blown project management.

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jblochjohnson
Are you on Mac? I LOVE OmniPlan.

~~~
samratjp
I second that. It also has excellent export support for html. Check it out -
<http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniplan/features/>

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sruffell
If you know and like python, Faces (<http://faces.homeip.net/>) may be worth a
look. I've enjoyed using it in the past. I was already familiar with Python
and appreciated that I did not need to spend time learning a software package
that I wasn't going to use on a regular basis. Ymmv.

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biancthom
A few months ago we launched a tool <http://www.tomsplanner.com> to create
Gantt charts. One of our main objectives was that is had to be easy to use and
user friendly. It is easier than MS Project and a lot more efficient than
Excel.

------
1331
I have quite enjoyed using Taskjuggler: <http://www.taskjuggler.org/>

The system is text-based with an editor built into the GUI. The downside is
that installing it means pulling a number of KDE dependencies as well...

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rcfox
You can make simple ones with Google Spreadsheets.
[http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/10/recently-google-
docs-...](http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/10/recently-google-docs-team-
started.html)

------
lostbit
Recently launched by crcarlson: Gantto (www.gantto.com)
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579282>

Do you have anything to do with it?

------
shrikant
OpenProj is a nice FOSS alternative to MS Project if that's specifically what
you're after - <http://openproj.org/openproj>

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biancthom
Tom's Planner is a great web based tool to create Gantt charts with. Much
faster than Excel and easier than MS Project. No learning curve, you can start
working immediately!

www.tomsplanner.com

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p858snake
Visio is nice but pricey. Basic Gantt charts can be done in most
spreadsheeting apps and word processors that support tables but you can't link
objects together.

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peterwwillis
last i looked there was nothing free that rivaled Project. other systems like
AtTask (shudder) have the same functionality in spades, but poorly designed
imho. scripting a basic gantt image creator from some image library and excel
files is pretty trivial with perl and other languages.

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trucious
SmartDraw seems nice.

