I just watched this nice video on how to trick Excel into making a Gantt chart.

It’s not that the process seems difficult, it’s just very time consuming:

1. Create your task list, with start dates, durations and end dates.
2. Create a stacked bar chart form this data.
3. Modify your bar chart to make the start dates invisible.
4. Modify your bar chart to make the tasks appear in the correct order (in ascending order of start date).
5. Modify your bar chart legends so the right date range is used.
6. Modify your bar chart axis divisions so that you can easily see if some tasks overlap.

My brain hurts.

I imagine there is a way to create templates to speed up the creation of the Gantt chart, but it still seems like twisting Excel into doing something it wasn’t designed to do in the first place. I understand that since pretty much everyone has Excel already installed on their computers, it seems like this process gives Gantt charts to project managers, for free.

Here’s the problem: your time is not free.

Think about it: how […]