Gantt Chart

A Gantt Chart, developed by Henry Gantt in the 1910s, is a bar chart meant to visually represent a project’s life cycle and timeline. It is intended to be a “living” document, meaning updated regularly during the project to reflect changes or unintended circumstances. They are to intended to provide a helpful timeline for projects by defining a deadline for each section of a project, like for the below Gantt chart I must finish the wing shape before I design the wing structure.

In my above Gantt Chart, each task is broken down on a week-by-week basis, with each weekly assignment (i.e. defining the aircraft purpose and wing shape, creating automation code, and a financial analysis of the aircraft) being its own task. Since this project was for a school assignment, I aligned each task with the due date for said task, to mitigate any personal confusion. If I fall behind schedule I will have to isolate the most important tasks, like wing shape and structure and the financial analysis, and focus more time on said tasks.

A few potential risks that may hinder project progress is 1, I am employed full time and it may be difficult to spend as much intentional time as I wish on this project after a full day’s work. To mitigate this risk I should have a daily planner with time allotted for each project/task. 2, I may encounter “parallel originality”, where I unintentionally create a solution that others have already created. To mitigate this risk I should do detailed, in-depth research of all potential solutions to ensure my ideas are my own.