Gantt chart vs Kanban board: which suits your team
Gantt chart vs kanban board is a choice between planning by dates and managing by flow. Use a Gantt chart when fixed deadlines and task order matter most. Use a Kanban board when work arrives in a steady stream and priorities change often.
What a Gantt chart shows
A Gantt chart lists tasks down the left side and time across the top. Each task is a bar. The bar starts on the day work begins and ends on the day it is due. You can see the whole schedule on one page.
The chart is named for Henry Gantt, an American engineer who died in 1919. He wrote about the method in an 1910 article for Engineering Magazine. A Polish engineer, Karol Adamiecki, built a similar tool, which he called a harmonogram, as early as 1896. He published in Polish and Russian, so it stayed little known.
Modern versions often add arrows between tasks that depend on each other. Many also add a "today" line, so you can see at a glance whether the project is ahead or behind.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Gantt chart" (history, Adamiecki's harmonogram, Gantt's 1910 article, how the chart is read).
What a Kanban board shows
A Kanban board shows work as cards in columns. A simple board has three: To do, Doing and Done. A card moves right as the work moves forward. Anyone walking past the board can see what is in progress and what is stuck.
The idea grew out of Toyota's just-in-time production system in the late 1940s. Work is "pulled" when there is room for it, instead of being pushed onto people. David Anderson brought the approach to technology teams. He wrote about it in his 2010 book, Kanban, after a project he led at Microsoft beginning in 2004.
The key rule is a limit on work in progress. For example, no one may have more than two cards in the Doing column. When the column is full, the team finishes something before starting something new. A full column also shows where the bottleneck is.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Kanban (development)" (Toyota origin, pull system, work-in-progress limits, Anderson's 2010 book).
Where each one works best
Pick a Gantt chart when the work has a clear start and a clear end. A building fit-out, an office move or a product launch are good examples. The tasks come in a set order, and a late task pushes the next one back. The chart makes that chain easy to see.
Pick a Kanban board when work never really ends. Support requests, content production, hiring and repairs are good examples. New items keep arriving. The team does not need a schedule for every one of them. It needs to know what to do next and when it is overloaded.
| Question | Gantt chart | Kanban board |
|---|---|---|
| Main view | Tasks over time | Tasks by stage |
| Best for | Projects with fixed dates | Ongoing, changing work |
| Handles change | Needs the plan redrawn | Just move or add a card |
| Shows deadlines | Yes, clearly | Only if you add dates |
| Shows overload | Not directly | Yes, through work limits |
The weak points of each
Early Gantt charts were drawn on paper. Any change to the plan meant drawing the chart again. Software has made edits easy, but the chart can still get crowded when many tasks link to each other. It also assumes the plan is mostly right. If the plan is a guess, the neat bars can give a false sense of control.
A Kanban board has the opposite problem. It shows what is moving, but it says little about when the whole job will be done. Without dates on the cards, a manager cannot easily answer a client who asks for a finish day. Boards also need discipline. If nobody respects the work limits, the board turns into a long to-do list.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Gantt chart" (limitations, paper charts, crowded dependencies, critique of fixed plans); Wikipedia, "Kanban (development)" (work-in-progress limits and the board elements a team needs).
How to choose for your team
Start with three questions. First, is there a hard end date? If yes, lean toward a Gantt chart. Second, does the list of tasks change every week? If yes, lean toward Kanban. Third, who will keep it up to date? A tool nobody updates is worse than no tool.
For a team of up to about ten people, a board on a wall or a free online tool is often enough to start. Larger projects with many linked tasks usually need the chart. Many managers use both. They keep one Gantt chart for the big milestones and one board for the daily work. The chart answers "when," and the board answers "what now."
Try one view for a month. Ask the team what helped and what got in the way. Then keep it, change it or switch.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Gantt chart": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart
- Wikipedia, "Kanban (development)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)
- Henry Gantt, "Work, Wages and Profit," Engineering Magazine, 1910
- David J. Anderson, Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, 2010