I got a number of emails in my inbox today telling me that Gantto had been featured on Kevin Kelly’sCool Tools blog. I also noticed recently that Gantto now has its own Wikipedia page, which is pretty cool. Thank you guys for helping to spread the word about Gantto!
Gantto is a Cool Tool
The reviewer used our online gantt chart to manage her time while publishing her book. You can see her review on Cool Tools here: Gantto review on Cool Tools.
Wikipedia
At one point I had tried to setup a Gantto page on Wikipedia and the editors politely suggested that as a business owner it was a “Grey Area” at best for me to edit my own page. Now a Gantto customer has taken the time to create a page here: Gantto Wikipedia page. If anyone reading this would like to add something to our Wikipedia page, please do!
Google Single Sign On
Gantto now supports GoogleSingle Sign On for our Online Gantt Chart. I had been putting this off for way too long since Flash makes it somewhat of a pain to implement well, but I got three requests for it, from three different users, on the same day and that put me over the edge. I now login with Google almost exclusively and love it.
All we request from you when logging in with Google is your name and email. We need your email to identify your account and we appreciate having your name so that we may adress you properly.
Existing google accounts should also login seamlessly. Please let me know if you have any problems when signed in via Google.
Google Single Sign On – Login
Logging in is now as simple as clicking a button. It really is amazing that SSO has not been adopted more widely.
Google Single Sign On – Signup
Signing up with your Google account is much more straight forward than with manual data entry. The SSO provider validates your email, so there is no need for a email-validation loop check.
Single Sign On for a Flash Application
Flash applications make SSO difficult by not allowing native windows to display web pages and their redirected parameters. They do this by design, Air applications for instance have no such restriction. It is possible to work around though, it is just a bit more annoying to do so. If you would like me to write more about the implementation, please let me know : chris@gantto.com. I don’t want to get sidetracked writing it up unless I am sure someone is interested
Project Resource Loading Report
Gantto now produces a resource loading report for our Online Gantt Chart.
Project Resource Loading
Resource loading is another great way to think about and describe your project. By understanding your resource loading requirements you can make high level comments like:
* Burn Rate – For a lot of jobs the head count is the primary expense, so how you use your resources drives how you will spend down your budget.
* Under or Over Allocation – Periods of low activity or high activity can show you where you resources may be sitting idle, or where they may be assigned more than they can accomplish.
* Peak Activity Times – Peak activity periods often require more management focus than usual to be on time and successful. This chart shows you were you will need to pay extra close attention to the project to keep it on track.
To show off this new feature, I created a simple schedule for building a Robot. You can see this is a pretty typical schedule for a mechatronic system where electrical integrates with mechanical and then software integrates with electro-mechanical.
This same schedule with a resource view shows what the man power or Full Time Equivalent (FTE) requirements for the project will be.
From this plot we can see that although the peak requirements for the job are 4 FTE, on average the resource loading will be less than that.
For complex projects it may not be clear what all of those FTE are working on. To help you with this insight we have created an inspector which breaks down the summary FTE into its individual parts. To see this summary, just mouse over the point on the chart you are interested in.
Customer Feedback
How do you think about Resource loading? What insights are you looking for from your project plans? Do you want us to plot project cost? Project value? Do you wish we did a better job highlighting conflicts or are the Sparklines enough? We want to know! Email me: chris@gantto.com to share your thoughts on Gantto, project management, or just to start a conversation.
Resource Management With Sparklines
Gantto now includes resource loading Sparklines for our Online Gantt Chart to help you understand your project’s resource loading at a glance.
Sparklines
Sparklines are a data-visualization invention of Prof. Edward Tufte and are designed to tap into the pattern matching portion of the brain. We find them extremely helpful for identifying at a glance if any one resource is under or over allocated.
Empty means not allocated
Green means 0-100% allocated
Red means allocated > 100%
Here is a simple example of a team gantt chart which is over allocated, but it is difficult to see the over allocation from this view.
However this same project rendered with Gantto’s Resource Manager View clearly shows the over allocation via the red sparklines:
So at a glance we can tell that both Fed and Chris are largely over allocated and that we will have to shift one project in time to account for our resource loading. Here is what the new plan looks like with resource loading taken into consideration, Chris’ sparklines are now all green:
The gantt chart clearly reflects how the project deliverables have changed in time:
Customer Feedback
It is great to have so many engaged customers helping us build our product. These new visualizations around resource loading are the direct result of some really inspirational conversations with our customers. We have a huge pipeline of ideas we are working on, please help us pick the best things to build first! Just email me: chris@gantto.com with your comments or to simply start a conversation.
Event Planner Tools You Probably Missed
Gantto was featured on Julius Solarus’ www.eventmanagerblog.com as one of the Ten Useful Event Tools You Probably Missed
Gantto is a great fit for Event Planners
1. Events usually occur on hard dates and can not be shifted in time
2. Event Planners are usually coordinating many different resources at the same time which sometimes depend on each other
3. Project management is only one small part of an event planner’s workload, and they need something simple to use
4. Event resources are usually spread across several different organizations
Hard End Dates
When faced with a hard end date, it can sometimes be overwhelming where to beging your planning process. One technique I find helpful is to model the project backwards in time. The thing I like about this process is that it is often easy to think of the last few things that must be done in order to meet your deadline. Once you have the ultimate tasks down, the next step is to think of what needs to happen in order for those to be completed, and so on.
By way of example, lets assume we need a set of brochures for an upcoming show and we want to know when we need to make our final decisions on design. A thought process might go like this
1. It takes two weeks for the printers to turn a brochure once we have final art and copy
2. The copy editor wants a week to work on the copy
3. And the artist wants a week to prefect the artwork to support the copy
Therefore we need to finalize the design input for the copy editor no later than one month before the show. So even though the brochures only take two weeks to print, we need to finalize this design a month in advance. This chain of reasoning easily presented with the following Gantt Chart that took 20 seconds to make in Gantto.
Coordination
A big part of keeping a team working well together is helping them understand how they depend on each other. For instance it may not be immediately obvious why the copy creator needs to start a full month before the brochures are due. However once the event planner explains the dependency of the artist and printer, it makes a lot more sense.
Easy to Use
We have built Gantto to leverage the power of Gantt Charts for modeling schedules, but we assume that event planners have a lot more on their mind than just managing a schedule. Our simple UI should allow anyone to easily create a helpful project model in just a few minutes. Our getting started video shows you how to build an online gantt chart in just a few minutes.
Communication
A lot of traditional scheduling tools require an expensive software install for anyone who wants to view or edit the schedule. With Gantto it is as simple as sharing a link.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions I would love to hear them. Email me any time: chris@gantto.com
All we request from you when logging in with Google is your name and email. We need your email to identify your account and we appreciate having your name so that we may adress you properly.
Existing google accounts should also login seamlessly. Please let me know if you have any problems when signed in via Google.
Signing up with your Google account is much more straight forward than with manual data entry. The SSO provider validates your email, so there is no need for a email-validation loop check.
This same schedule with a resource view shows what the man power or Full Time Equivalent (FTE) requirements for the project will be.
Empty means not allocated
Green means 0-100% allocated
Red means allocated > 100%
Here is a simple example of a team gantt chart which is over allocated, but it is difficult to see the over allocation from this view.
However this same project rendered with Gantto’s Resource Manager View clearly shows the over allocation via the red sparklines:
So at a glance we can tell that both Fed and Chris are largely over allocated and that we will have to shift one project in time to account for our resource loading. Here is what the new plan looks like with resource loading taken into consideration, Chris’ sparklines are now all green:
The gantt chart clearly reflects how the project deliverables have changed in time:
