A Gantt is a form of visual representation that utilizes bars to represent a time period on a specific item. In most cases, this is referred to as a Gantt chart. This type of representation was developed by Karol Adamiecki in 1896. He called it a Harmonogram, but did not publish it until 1931. It was not widely accepted because it was only in the Polish language.

Henry Gantt developed his chart in 1910, and had it published in The Engineering Magazine that same year. He used his charts to visually illustrate the beginning and ending times of both summary and terminal elements of a project. A work breakdown structure of a project is made up of these summary and terminal elements. The Gantt charts can also be used to show relationships and dependencies between the different elements on the same chart. When first introduced, it was considered a revolutionary development, but because of its wide-scale use in many computer programs, most people are used to seeing them today and consider them common place.

The use of Gantt charts are now widely used and understood. The most common use is the representation of the different phases and activities a project goes through during its execution.  They are very useful in small to medium-sized projects, but if too many elements are incorporated, they can become confusing or overwhelming.

The best use of the Gantt chart is to represent time, cost, and the scope of a project. What is not represented on them is the size of a project or the resources that are involved. If two or more projects are represented by this type of chart, it could be easily misunderstood that they are the same, when in fact, one has more relevance and profit potential than the others, but that is not recoded with this bar chart.

The Gantt charts or bar charts are very commonly used in many computer programs for the intended purposes. This is a quick and easy way to communicate the time, scope, and cost of a project. Just do not use them at the same time to define scheduling activities within the project. Matching up all the variables is very complex.

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