Given its name after Henry Gantt, who successfully introduced the first model of gantt charts in the early 1910´s in the USA, the gantt charts are by today a very important management tool used primarily for the planning and scheduling of huge infrastructural projects. Henry Gantt, who was actually a mechanical engineer, was very much engaged in the processes and organization of work and wrote various papers, essays and books on these topics over the course of his professional life. According to Gantt scheduling tasks and following a sensible order of work are the most significant things for a productive working environment. Gantt´s index charts help to evaluate and optimize the efficiency of industrial procedures and its individual steps. The gantt chart is basically a visual schedule that helps with organizing, controlling and understanding work schemes. Furthermore, this unique visualizing kind of chart likewise helps to record and to follow the general development process as well as the individual phases of the project.
Currently this chart system has been translated into software, resulting in its advanced and modern version, the gantt software. There is a large range of different software available these days that can help with a number of tasks displaying quickly and thoroughly whether you are ahead or behind the plan. There are numerous areas that profit from such understandable visualization charts and therefore the use of gantt software is very popular in industrial fields such as logistics, project management or production planning. However it has also shown to be very practical with average users for coordinating work and monitoring ongoing projects. Today's software basing on the gantt charts also offers fresh ideas for old planning systems. Moreover the understandable work breakdown diagrams not only offer an organizing help, but in addition help not to lose track of those small stages in the general picture.