Whether you are a “visual” person who needs to see in order to understand or an auditory person who prefers to hear in order to best comprehend, I think we can all agree that a visual planning system for project management is a great way to go. Especially if it is meeting our project scheduling, project status reporting, and resource management needs in a way that can make our lives easier and can help us disseminate information throughout the organization (ours and the customers’) to those who need it.
Yes, for PM, visual usually wins out. Charts, graphs, reports, percentages, and presentation slides abound everywhere you look and every meeting you attend. And status reporting and meetings…. Well, there are resource usage reports that highlight areas where your resources are overextended. Gantt charts are designed to provide a visual representation of how your entire project is laid out. Each task is represented and all dependencies, work completed, dates, and resources assigned are usually integrated into the Gantt chart visual view. And don’t forget about budget forecasting and analysis. For the projects I’ve managed over the years, I’ve created numerous ways to display this information very visually for my team, my executive management, and my customer. Sometimes what I have suffices, sometimes the customer and various stakeholders ask for something new which sends me off searching for or creating the best reporting scenario for the project at hand. Information is critical, and the delivery of this information can be critical to end user comprehension and adoption...
Yes, for PM, visual usually wins out. Charts, graphs, reports, percentages, and presentation slides abound everywhere you look and every meeting you attend. And status reporting and meetings…. Well, there are resource usage reports that highlight areas where your resources are overextended. Gantt charts are designed to provide a visual representation of how your entire project is laid out. Each task is represented and all dependencies, work completed, dates, and resources assigned are usually integrated into the Gantt chart visual view. And don’t forget about budget forecasting and analysis. For the projects I’ve managed over the years, I’ve created numerous ways to display this information very visually for my team, my executive management, and my customer. Sometimes what I have suffices, sometimes the customer and various stakeholders ask for something new which sends me off searching for or creating the best reporting scenario for the project at hand. Information is critical, and the delivery of this information can be critical to end user comprehension and adoption...
