Assignment at work..question

[rose45]

My boss wanted me to speak with a few managers and get a sense of their projects/meetings and deadlines and place it in a Gantt chart so everyone has this open communication of what everyone is doing and what they have going on at work.

 

I got the sense the best way was to place everything in an excel file and group it into different categories like projects and their deadlines. Annual Meetings specific people go to and when etc.

 

So I showed individually what each person is doing and then another spreadsheet with everything together in one spot.

 

When I looked online I see a Gantt chart is a graph which I feel would be hard to do with with this since alot of things are weekly, monthly regular assignments..others are yearly, others are just meetings.

 

I am worried he is going to reject what I did but I feel like a chart wouldn't really show anything too different than what I have and it might be more clear the way i have it.

 

Anyone hear of this and do you think I did this assignment wrong?

[florence of suburbia]

My boss wanted me to speak with a few managers and get a sense of their projects/meetings and deadlines and place it in a Gantt chart so everyone has this open communication of what everyone is doing and what they have going on at work.

 

I got the sense the best way was to place everything in an excel file and group it into different categories like projects and their deadlines. Annual Meetings specific people go to and when etc.

 

So I showed individually what each person is doing and then another spreadsheet with everything together in one spot.

 

When I looked online I see a Gantt chart is a graph which I feel would be hard to do with with this since alot of things are weekly, monthly regular assignments..others are yearly, others are just meetings.

 

I am worried he is going to reject what I did but I feel like a chart wouldn't really show anything too different than what I have and it might be more clear the way i have it.

 

Anyone hear of this and do you think I did this assignment wrong?

 

If your boss specified a Gannt chart, I would provide a Gannt chart. I assume you do not have access to Microsoft Project, which is a program designed for this purpose?

 

If not, another option would be Microsoft Visio, which is a flowcharting program that can also create timelines and Gannt charts.

 

If neither of the above are available, there is a way to create a simple Gannt chart in Excel.

 

1. Create columns that represent units of time. For example, one column per month, four columns per month, whatever gives you the right scope.

 

2. Create rows representing various projects and tasks.

 

3. For each row, shade the cells with a color to create a "bar" extending across the amount of time the project will take.

[danstanton]

If he asked for a Gantt chart, give him one. He is the boss. As said, MS Project can help. There should also be applications online that can create Gantt charts.

[spiderowl]

Sounds like what you did is excellent from a point of view of easy access to the different bits of information he/she needs. The only thing is, if you were asked to put it in a Gantt chart then it's best to do that and to do the others and show how the information could be better elaborated on in your Excel sheet.

 

I guess what he/she wanted was something he could look at and see at a glance what people are doing. A Gantt chart could show this and if you can do it over a sufficient period of time to fit in even the half-hour meetings (difficult), then it would be useful but a big chart. It allows a manager to see what time is being spent on what activities and to figure out if this is the most productive way of spending that time. I'm not sure that an Excel chart would do this. You need to think about whether your charts provide all that he would want in an instantly accessible way. Personally, I find that Excel is useful for recording information such as deadlines, but it isn't easy to see at a glance without narrowing down the particular week you are dealing with and printing that off.

 

Don't know if this helps you or not.