Task management is an essential aspect of time management in any business. Effective task management can save time and make delivering quality work extremely effortless.

Over time, business owners and stakeholders have come up with various ways to manage and track their tasks. Among the various methods, a few have proven to be more effective than others. One of the popular options is the Gantt Chart.

Gantt Charts

The Gantt Chart, designed by Henry Gantt around 1910-1915, has been a popular method of task management among corporations and businesses.

Roughly six steps are necessary to starting a new Gantt Chart for a project, those being:

1. Define the starting and ending dates of the project timeline
2. List out tasks in a specific fashion
3. Include the starting and ending dates with their according tasks
4. Define task dependencies (define which tasks lead to which tasks, usually related tasks are connected with lines on the chart)
5. Add the tasks to the Gantt Chart
6. Assign tasks to your team members and make sure they are aware of the tasks.

As mentioned, since Gantt Chart’s invention, the task management method has been gaining popularity. The growth in Gantt Chart's popularity has several critical reasons:

Ease of Use

The Gantt Chart is a beginner-friendly method of management. Using the Gantt Chart is fairly simple, and requires almost zero professional knowledge. Any person on a team can create a Gantt Chart as long as they are familiar with the project and know the basics of Gantt Charts.

Shows Overlap and Dependencies

One of the most mentioned strengths of the Gantt Chart is its ability to show overlaps and dependencies between tasks.

As one construction project includes numerous tasks, it is common to start other tasks while another group of tradespeople are still working on a previous one. Showing tasks overlaps allows every member of the team to understand the overall state of the team. Other than this, it also leads to better management of manpower, and boosts team coordination, leading to increased productivity.

Another aspect is the dependencies between tasks. As buildings are built layer by layer, some tasks have prerequisites to them: meaning some other tasks must be done before they start. Similar to the advantages of show task overlaps, being clear about tasks dependencies lets managers and contractors make informed decisions that leads to an increase in overall team efficiency.

Turns Complex to Simple

The way Gantt Charts present project schedules and tasks is more visually straightforward, the same way a calendar view is. One can easily distinguish the difference between a long-term task and a short-term task.

Gantt Charts help contractors and managers achieve “saying more with less.” Providing information and schedules through a simple, visually-friendly medium often helps boost productivity and prevents feelings of frustration and overwhelmedness among team members.

Kanban Boards

Kanban Board is another popular way of managing tasks within a team. The Kanban Board features several different “boards” that represent various stages of a task. Usually the stages are arranged from left to right, from unstarted to finished.

The “managing” comes from making tasks as “cards” that start from the left-most column. The Kanban Board method adopts what is called the “task pulling” system. Rather than management assigning tasks to teams, the teams would “pull” and actively take tasks from the board. As the team makes progress on the task, the card that represents the task will slowly be moved towards the right.

A few other elements that a Kanban Board usually contains include:

Limits to certain columns

To make Kanban Boards effective, limits to certain columns are necessary requirements. One of the most important ones is the Work in Progress (WIP) column. For example, teams would put a 3-cards limit on the WIP column to restrict team members to finish tasks currently in the WIP column before starting a new task from the “To-do” column.

Commitment Point

Commitment points serve as the “backstage” of a Kanban Board. Team members would place tasks and ideas that can be picked up by team members when they’re ready.

Delivery Point

Delivery points are the counterparts of commitment points. As commitment points are at the beginning of a Kanban Board’s workflow, delivery points are at the end. Tasks at the delivery point are the tasks’ products are already delivered.

As Kanban Board is a popular and a widely adopted system, it comes with its own strengths as well:

Visualization & Visibility

Compared to Gantt Charts, Kanban Boards are more visually-oriented similar to that of a task list. Every task is on one single board, and it doesn’t get too complicated when there are multiple tasks because of the existence of commitment points.

The use of divided columns to organize tasks also makes checking the states of tasks extremely efficient. The Kanban Board’s categorization logic helps with this strength even more. One only has to understand the basics of Kanban Board to know that the left-most tasks are the most undone, and the right-most tasks are the one with the most progress.

What is brilliant about Kanban Boards is it uses vertical columns to form a horizontal spectrum of task progress. At first glance, one can tell the progress of each task based on its location on the board.

Reducing “Waste”

One of the most valuable qualities of a business team is “productivity.” More products produced under a set amount of time means higher efficiency, which equates to higher productivity.

The term “waste,” when used with references to business and productivity, refers to “any action that uses resources without adding value.” The term “value” here refers to “something that the customer is willing to pay for,” some form of product or service that sells (note that there are numerous actions that do not produce “value” but are necessary to the production of “value.” Those do not count towards “waste”).

The Kanban Board method eliminates “waste” effectively, as unimportant tasks wouldn’t be on the board to begin with. Team members only have to focus on the tasks on the board.

Preventing Burnout

Traditionally, tasks are “pushed” and assigned to teams by management. This can sometimes cause a sense of overwhelmedness as pushing tasks to already-busy teams is likely possible.

Under the “task pulling” system, teams actively take tasks into their agenda when they have completed previous work. Management would only have to monitor each teams’ individual progress and the overall progress on the board. The Kanban method creates possibilities for the “task pulling” system, preventing burnout and creating a healthy work condition among employees.

Limitations to the Two Methods

Gantt Charts and Kanban Boards, despite their popularity, are certainly not flawless methods to task management. They do have their limitations, and some may overshadow their strengths.

Gantt Chart: Unfit for Large Projects

Gantt Chart makes managing tasks “simple,” but not “concise,” especially for larger projects. Although it is strong in showcasing task start dates and deadlines, Gantt Charts tend to get overcomplicated when used on large projects.

For smaller projects, the Gantt Chart may look a little something like this:

If used for larger projects, it may get a little overwhelming: