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My manager knows how to read a Gantt chart and can make sense of them. Why doesn't FogBugz have them?

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5 Answers

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Gantt charts were introduced 99 years ago to help manufacturing managers supervise complex, repetitive manufacturing projects like making steam locomotives. There's a lot of complexity, but not a lot of risk or variability in making the 205th iteration of a particular locomotive. Gantt charts helped non-assembly-line manufacturing operations to make their operations more efficient, making sure that the axle-makers were done with their batch of axles right about the time the wheelwrights were done with the wheels. That way, no one sat idle and the project moved along at maximum efficiency.

Gantt charts are great for managing projects where risk is low or measurable (5% chance that the drywall guy won't show up for work), or where variability is low (the drywall guy can finish 200-250 linear feet of wall in a shift).

The temptation is to use the same tool to represent complex software projects, but software projects are fraught with risk (turns out the libraries you rely on have a bug) and variability (the customer called again). On a construction project, if the drywall guy gets the flu, that part of the chart might come in at 110% of its initial projected time. In software, a total unknown can triple the time it takes to do a portion of the project.

Over the years, most software managers have found that using Gantt charts might provide them with an overall sense of control, though at great expense. But the chart actually hides more important information than it shows. It hides the risks and variability inherent in the development process. On the plus side, they're very easy to understand at a glance. On the downside, the understanding that they convey can be, and often is, deeply flawed.

Representing software projects with Gantt charts does have one thing to recommend it: people almost immediately grok the Gantt chart, no matter who they are. Going forward, we're hoping to work on a way of representing an information-rich chart that will capitalize on people's visceral understanding of the Gantt chart without sacrificing information-richness.

For now, the developer timelines give a good visceral impression of where you are in a project and where the risks might lie. alt text

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+1 for the history lesson! – tghw♦ Dec 10 2009 at 23:01
Even if you feel like Gantt charts are the incarnation of devil, cause death to puppies, and may implode the Earth, they're such a standard requirement in software planning that not having makes many automatically exclude FogBugz as a scheduling tool. I tried out EBS with a test project and entered estimates for everything and felt the process was pretty easy. Without a Gantt chart, it's useless though. You could use EBS information to make the edges make the edges of each Gantt line fuzzy and overlap and make a better Gantt chart, but either way, FogBugz needs Gantt charts. – Samuel Neff Apr 14 at 3:09
Yes, a Gantt chart that reflects uncertainty rather than masking it would be ideal, as I state in the second-to-last paragraph of my answer. – Rich Armstrong♦ Apr 14 at 13:29
Two comments, firstly the technology exists for Gantt charts that reflect uncertainty. You can take the basic technology behind PERT (developed in the 50's and 60's) and then combine it with Monte Carlo analysis which will reflect both the interactions between tasks as well as the variability in tasks being completed. The second issue to bare in mind is simply that just like EBS, the Gantt chart is just a tool. A bad PM is too focussed on one tool, a good PM picks the tool to suit the project, the team. Not having the option of using a Gantt chart does limit the PM's choice. – www.engineeringfortherealworld.com Apr 29 at 5:43
I understand your argument for not including Gantt charts and I am not opposed to them. However, their is little doubt that it is something clients are familiar with and can easily understand. Do you have any recomendations for alternatives for customer reporting so that I can start weaning our clients off Gantt charts? Developer timelines would definitely NOT work for them – ldevoux May 10 at 19:59
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A Gantt chart shows milestones, a hierarchical list of tasks with estimates and dependencies between tasks - in what way do these things not apply to software development? The Developer Timelines, which is valuable in different ways, tells me none of these things (and I don't expect it to).

The problem is when the chart becomes the work product instead of a view into the project, or when the contraints of the chart constrain the management of the project.

The Gantt chart is not tied to a development methodology, so don't hold it responsible for shortcomings of those systems.

There's no single chart or report that meets all needs for software project management - FB would be improved with the addition of the Gantt chart to its toolbox.

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I was recently introducing FogBugz to a senior project managers. They were very pleased about FogBugz until one manager asked me to show a Gantt chart. Unfortunately it seems that Gantt chart is so critical feature that is not going to be traded-off. I did upvote the feature request fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/6177/… – jani-hur Mar 16 at 9:18
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Simply put, what a Gantt chart would provide is an overview of milestones or more importantly, long-term project planning. For instance, I know that we have various projects starting on different weeks. Within those projects we have different milestones and multiple cases. But there is no way for me to have a Gantt-like overview of the next 3 months.

This is long overdue in FB. I don't even know if it needs much integration. I just want to see all my start and end dates viewed on a Gantt. Actually, based on the estimates it could show start/end for each case nested beneath the associated project. That's all I would need.

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We have a feature request open for an overview of your milestones and a way to manage them graphically: fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/6177/… would that give you some of the project management tools you need? – adambox♦ Dec 3 2010 at 15:32
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Actually, it would be useful to have gantt chart drawing capabilities, at least to have overview for all tracked projects. Just use not individual tasks for charting, but milestones. That way we can use all the benefits of fogbugz and keep management happy at the same time.

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We are a small development firm with many clients. All developers can (and often do) work on all projects. For each client, we might have 3 major milestones and ten stages (sub-milestones).

I need to view all milestones in a single chart. The only ways I know to do this in FogBugz is to: (A) Create fewer FB projects and use Areas as the real projects and create milestones for the project (B) Create a FB project for each real project and use only global milestones with a naming convention (PROJ-MILESTONE).

Neither of these is satisfactory because either way, I have a list of 100's or thousands of milestones to select in any case menu (rather than just ten per project).

Tangential, we have the same major milestones for 90% of all projects (call it waterfall if you like, design phase, development, delivery, support). It would be nice to automatically generate these milestones when creating a new project.

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