Top 5 Gantt Chart Alternatives to Amp-Up your Project Management Game

A Gantt chart is a visual project management technique most commonly used by project managers to illustrate project planning. They can offer you important information like project schedules, a number of tasks, their dependencies, and many other things at a glance. Anyone remotely associated with project management must have gone through a Gantt chart and know how powerful they can be.

While Gantt charts are undoubtedly a great tool for visualization, they have some fatal flaws as well. The increasing complexity of modern projects brings forward many issues that Gantt charts are unable to deal with efficiently. That’s why it’s essential to know about Gantt chart alternatives and use them when required.

This article will take a look at the 5 best Gantt chart software alternatives that can replace Gantt charts and deliver the required information in a simpler manner.

5 Gantt chart alternatives you can try

Despite their weaknesses, Gantt charts are still a powerful tool and have several uses. For some applications, however, another simpler or better Gantt chart alternative would be more ideal. Here are the five most common alternatives to Gantt chart software you can use to improve your overall project management capabilities.

1. Project timelines

Project timelines are an exceptional tool to simplify a project’s activities for an external stakeholder without any complex details. They show the chronological order of project tasks and offer a brief idea about what needs to be done.

In high-level discussions, intricate project details such as dependencies, resource allocation, and other project management constraints are inconsequential. Project timelines are perfect for such cases as they give the necessary information about a project without complicating anything.

Create a great project timeline in seconds! Try Kissflow’s project timeline template now.

2. Task lists

No matter the industry or the stage of your career, a well-made to-do list will always be useful for your productivity. Project task lists are a simple tool that can help you find the chronology, resources, details, and status of a task.

Tasks lists are an ideal solution for highly flexible projects. You can add any dependent task, change the priority, and do many other things without causing any disturbance to the other tasks. Moreover, you can attach them with other monitoring and visualization tools to keep an eye on the progress and shift between high-level perspectives easily.

Kissflow offers a free task list template to simplify your project management. Try now!

3. Kanban boards

If flexibility is among the most important requirements for your projects, then Kanban boards are an ideal project visualization tool to enhance your team’s productivity. Kanban boards are an excellent project tracking tool that allows you to keep an eye on progress from the initial stages to the end.

Kanban boards are also an excellent project collaboration tool because of their overall visibility and flexibility. You can create one virtually or on an actual board as well. Virtual Kanban boards are generally more preferred nowadays because they are easier to manage and accommodate remote teams as well.

Kanban boards, task delegation, enhanced reports, and other project management features. Start using Kissflow Projects for free. 

4. Scrum boards

Scrum boards are quite similar to their Kanban counterparts when it comes to collaboration and visibility. The main difference is in the approach. Kanban boards are generally less organized and give more leeway to the team. In the scrum setting, teams have a say in selecting their project goals before the start of a sprint and dedicate all of their resources to achieving them.

5. Project dashboards and reports

Gantt charts are great for tracking project progress and keeping an eye on things that need to be done. However, they may become hard to understand for your project team or external stakeholders if you add all the details.

Status reports are a viable Gantt chart alternative that can help you communicate your progress effectively. Many traditional organizations still rely on such methods to effectively communicate with clients, sponsors, and other external entities.

For new teams, project dashboards are another excellent tool to understand the requirements of the project. Many project management tools come with the dashboard feature that is convenient to understand and interactive enough to show you all the details you need to get up to speed.

A tool that adapts to your needs. Keep track of your progress and make data-driven decisions with Kissflow Project

Major shortcomings of the Gantt chart tool

Despite their popularity, Gantt charts come with several limitations. These flaws become increasingly obvious as you increase the complexity of your project.

Project visualization tools such as the Gantt Chart are generally developed to simplify tracking and give a complete picture of your project at a glance. In the case of complex projects with resource requirements and shifting priorities, this becomes increasingly difficult to achieve with the Gantt charts software.

Some of the most prominent disadvantages of using Gantt charts for project management are:

1. Gantt charts may become hard to understand

Gantt charts are meant to simplify your project. The right Gantt chart will tell you the project schedule and the relationship between tasks at a glance. However, adding other details about resources and milestones will make the chart overly complex and reduce its efficiency.

Sometimes, Gantt charts for complex projects become so contorted that it gets hard for even an experienced project manager to comprehend them. Let alone the project stakeholders and clients who don’t know anything about Gantt charts.

2. They may require a lot of time

Creating and maintaining a Gantt chart is a time-consuming process, especially if you are making one on a spreadsheet. That’s one of the reasons why dynamic projects that undergo several changes don’t use them and look for a spreadsheet alternative to create a Gantt chart tool.

Using project management software to create and maintain a Gantt chart can save you a lot of time. However, these project management tools are often expensive. So, using them solely for Gantt charts would be a waste.

3. They are not flexible

By their nature, Gantt charts require extensive planning, and modern project management has evolved from that. Nowadays flexible methodologies like Agile require you to constantly update your plan and change things.

Gantt charts can’t accommodate that so easily. Generally, they don’t do well in dynamic environments and can hinder effective collaboration within the team.

Try Kissflow Project – A complete solution to manage projects

No one can declare a certain Gantt chart alternative as the best because the right choice depends on your situation and requirements. Gantt charts are still very popular in the project management fraternity because of their visualization and tracking capabilities. However, they fall short in some aspects of modern project management software.

The alternatives presented here are not the only solutions that can replace Gantt charts in your projects. There are countless solutions out there, but these 5 tools integrated inside a project management software are certainly the most promising. A  tool that offers flexible project management and is a great alternative to Gantt charts is Kissflow Project.

Kissflow Project

• is simple and intuitive to use,
• frees you from constantly tracking teammates,
• offers multiple views to visualize projects
• provides “Done”, “In-Progress”, and “On Hold” states for clarity on status,
• gives you access to powerful reports to make data-driven decisions, and
• reminds you when tasks near their deadlines.

There’s a whole lot more to Kissflow Project. Sign up for free today to get acquainted with its simple yet powerful capabilities! Check out project pricing plans.