flow charts

[FrankB]

When I was in construction, we had a paper flow chart that had horizonal
lines for WHO and for HOW LONG. First day of construction (April 1st) was
for the earth movers, (7 days) Just underneath that was the survayors.
(Started on the 5th day of earth movers and lasted 4 days) Then came the
trenchers to put in the underground piping (April 8th, for 3 days),
Electricians (April 8th 4 days)

If you get the gist of the chart, is there one out there that will simply
show this?
BTW, the bars were colored and you could see at a glance as to what was
supposed to be happening on any given day.

 

[Del Cotter]

When I was in construction, we had a paper flow chart that had horizonal
lines for WHO and for HOW LONG. First day of construction (April 1st) was
for the earth movers, (7 days) Just underneath that was the survayors.
(Started on the 5th day of earth movers and lasted 4 days) Then came the
trenchers to put in the underground piping (April 8th, for 3 days),
Electricians (April 8th 4 days)

If you get the gist of the chart, is there one out there that will simply
show this?

Google for "Gantt chart". This sort of graph is named after Henry Gantt,
a project engineer in the first half of the twentieth century.

Project management software is designed to produce this sort of graph,
but Excel can do it too with a little ingenuity. The key is to choose
the horizontal "Stacked Bar Chart" type, include bars for the length of
time before the start as well as the task duration, and then format the
"time to start" bar to be invisible. This leaves the duration bar
appearing to float in the middle of the graphical space. You can label
the vertical axis with project members or task types, and the horizontal
axis with time or date.

Googling for "Excel Gantt chart" should produce a large number of
examples and tutorials.