Chat about Gantt charts
Software Tales #2
A discussion with an “Agile Project Manager” and a Product Owner about Gantt charts:
Manny (Agile PM): “Hey John (Product Owner), you did the estimations for the Project and said that it will take 3 Sprints to complete, but we need to do an accurate Gantt chart for all the activities”
John (Product Owner): “I think that is useless to do a Gantt chart, I bet that it will not be valid anymore starting from the second week of the Sprint”
Manny: “Nooooo, we need to do that, otherwise how can we fit all the activities on the day that they need to be performed?”
John:” Ok, if you really want to do that, let’s do it, but I don’t want to spend more than 30 minutes”
2 hours later…
John:” Hey Manny, I think really we are loosing to much time here… I’ll let you complete the Gantt, in any case, if no problems will show up and the scope will not change, for me is fine what you did”
1 week later…
Paul (Customer): “Hey John, Manny, we forgot to tell you that the service that you are creating needs to communicate with other 2 applications”
John:” Ok, I can do the analysis and we can prioritize the new work starting from next Sprint. Manny, I think that you can throw away your Gantt chart”
What is the problem here?
- Simply put, you cannot predict the future, so Gantt charts will become very soon obsolete regardless on how many hours you spend doing them.
- There was a change in scope during the project, this is quite normal, and Agile methodologies are born to handle this kind of situation. There is no such thing as an Agile Gantt Chart.
Do you see any other problem? Do you like Gantt charts?