Today, more and more innovation managers are realizing the importance of the role of Gantt chart in innovation management. As we already explained, a Gantt Chart is a bar chart that shows the progress of a project/innovation in a timeline format. It gives your innovation manager and your team a quick and efficient view of the overall innovation project, with the proposed dates, the dependency of tasks and, of course, what is the current state of each task and your project overall. It is easy for everyone involved to understand the timeline and progress of the innovation project, enabling the team to better coordinate their activities and thereby improve the overall efficiency.
Let’s explore 10 main benefits of using Gantt Chart in innovation management.
Benefit No. 1: Clear visual representation of complex innovation project information
The main benefit of using a Gantt Chart in innovation management is the ability to visually observe and understand everything that is related to your innovation project in one single place. It acts as a visualization and prioritization tool, making critical innovation project information easily accessible. Gantt Chart provides your innovation manager a complete overview of the innovation project activities, such as resources involved in each activity, start-to-end task dates, task duration, task dependencies, and progress made. You can easily see if there are any bottlenecks and track the progress of your innovation project. Overseeing the entire innovation project allows you to stay within budget, manage your resources effectively and make sure the project is on track to meet the deadline.
Benefit No. 2: Simplified Management
An innovation project generally consists of various phases, all with multiple and complex tasks working towards the implementation. Gantt Chart helps in putting all these pieces together and representing them visually in a simplified manner. This helps innovation managers in making effective decisions regarding team coordination, resource utilization, assigning tasks, etc. Thanks to the Gantt chart, this complex information package is more manageable because Gantt Chart visual representation makes it easy for innovation managers to understand the detailed innovation project information at a glance.
Benefit No. 3: Efficient resource allocation
Gantt Chart assists innovation managers to visualize their human resource capacity. By visualizing information about the tasks of the innovation project, managers are able to make more focused, effective decisions regarding human resources. With Gantt Charts innovation managers can easily track where and how their resources are being utilized and make appropriate resource adjustments. You will be able to see delegated tasks and align your resources without overloading your team members with too much work. When resources are properly managed and tracked an innovation project is more likely to be completed within defined deadlines and budgets. And, better and more efficient innovation management means not overloading any of the resources.
Benefit No. 4: Improved Time Management
As time plays an important role in the life-cycle of innovation, Gantt Chart helps innovation managers to understand the importance of time delays while managing innovation projects. Providing a unified view of the overall progress of innovation projects, innovation managers can easily allocate time to each and every task and team members can plan their activities in accordance with the defined timeline. Gantt Chart greatly enables team members to better manage their time, thereby enabling a team to improve their efficiency. Helping teams understand the overall impact of innovation project delays can foster stronger collaboration while encouraging a better task organization.
Benefit No. 5: Visibility of Task dependencies
Oftentimes, innovation project tasks are somehow related and the beginning of one task depends on the completeness of other tasks. On the Gantt Chart, innovation managers can view which tasks are dependent on each other and if there are any overlapping activities. By monitoring this, you will ensure that your team has enough time to complete tasks in proper order so that their work doesn’t impact the overall progress of your innovation project.
Benefit No. 6: Everyone in sync
Gantt Chart helps align team members, allowing them to easily see and share information and stay up-to-date with innovation project changes. As it provides a visual representation of the entire innovation project, it becomes easier for innovation managers and teams to understand and analyze innovation project information. As team members update the completeness percentage of each task, everyone stays on the same page. Your team will be able to have a complete picture of what is happening and maintain communication regarding who is doing what and how far the innovation project has progressed.
Benefit No. 7: Sense of Accountability
As Gantt Chart shows all phases and tasks within the entire innovation project, it helps employees understand their responsibilities, see their work in progress and therefore understand how their tasks relate to the entire innovation project. On a Gantt Chart, task progress information and delays in one activity are displayed transparently, allowing team members to hold each other accountable. All this ensures that the chances of the entire innovation project being delayed are decreased.
Benefit No. 8: Enhanced Transparency
Through Gantt Chart all parties involved in the innovation project can easily track its progress while monitoring the individual processes working towards the project completion. It shows the details of each team member’s work and its completeness so that everyone is aware of each other’s overload. This way you will be able to easily spot and help those who are struggling to complete their own task. More transparency means better understanding which leads to a successful completion of the innovation project.
Benefit No. 9: Greater Flexibility
Changes happen all the time within the innovation management projects, therefore innovation managers and your teams have to be prepared to make required adjustments to keep your innovation project on the track and proceed towards completion. With Gantt Chart you can easily react to any changes in the project timeline or scope. Since Gantt Chart automatically updates and reflects any changes made to schedules or requirements in real-time, you will be able to react immediately.
Benefit No. 10: Effective/Improved communication
Effective communication is crucial in order to keep everyone aligned and a key factor to innovation project execution. Gantt Chart greatly assists in providing clear communication by visualizing innovation project schedule and by showing resources allocated for each activity. This helps innovation managers understand who is working on which activity and allows for the opportunity to provide feedback, if needed. As Gantt Chart automatically reflects all updates regarding the progress of any task, it makes team communication much easier and flexible by showing everybody what is the next activity to be done in your innovation project.
If you are interested in viewing Gantt Chart in action, Innovation Cloud team is more than happy to help. Contact us today to understand how each of these benefits can be applied to your innovation management activities.
