Many years ago, when I was getting my first real exposure to project management, I (like many newbie or non-PMs I talk to) wasn't aware of the history of the Gantt chart, and I was fairly certain that "Gantt" must be an acronym for something. So, for my own edification at the time, I did a little research into this ubiquitous project management tool for some documentation I was working on. Just in case you were wondering, here's a Cliffs Notes version of how the Gantt chart came to be and the impact its creator has had on the world of project management.
First, the earth cooled. Then in 1861, Henry Laurence Gantt was born. After university, a brief stint as a teacher, and a budding career as a draughtsman, he became a mechanical engineer, eventually teaming with Frederick W. Taylor (the "Father of Scientific Management") at Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel. Later on, he worked as a management consultant, employing his experience in manufacturing and production, as well as worker productivity measurement and management.
Among his many contributions to project and resource management techniques is the Gantt chart, which he developed in the 1910s and is still a heavily used management tool nearly a century later. It was originally developed to schedule and record work in production environments, and it was quickly extended to support broader Project Management practices, eventually being used to plan, schedule, and manage the creation of the Hoover Dam and US Interstate highway system. The intuitive, graphical representation of the sequence and relationship between tasks as well as the work required to complete the task afforded easy planning of project work and measurement of the work against a linear calendar.
Many, if not most, modern PM practices can be traced back to Gantt's pioneering work during the "Second Industrial Revolution" in the arenas of production and resource management. For example, the more recent Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Dupont's Critical Path Method (CPM), both developed in the 1950s to support the increasingly complex projects of the post-war industrial boom, are variations on or use components of Gantt's tools and methodologies.
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