GANTT charts have some utility when a Product Owner has to present to
naive users (non-Agile managers) to get a project funded.

Once implementation of the plan starts, the team enters the fog of
war, just like a squad of troops entering battle. Military generals
fully understand that once the enemy is engaged, all plans are
shattered and the front line must self-organize to win the day.

Taking the GANTT chart into the Sprint has people look at a planning
document that is absolutely wrong after the first day. At best it
gobbles up a full time resource in the futile effort to keep the chart
up to date. Even worse, it may lead the team to do the wrong thing and
lose, i.e. a failed Sprint goes up in flames.

The GANTT chart was banned from Sprints for these reasons when I led
the initial implementation of Scrum in 1993. 13 years later I don't
see any reason to change this. In fact after consulting with leading
companies up and down Silicon Valley and in other parts of the world
this past year, getting their burndown charts updated daily and
visible to the entire company is a top priority. Any distraction by
GANTT charts is a futile exercise.

Jeff Sutherland

> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:50:38 -0000
> From: "lukehohmann" <LukeHohmann@...>
> Subject: Re: progress visibility vs. simple tools: why Gantts can still be
useful
>
> I'm finding the discussion of the utility of Gantt charts quite
> interesting, as it reflects the bias of the software development
> communities thinking that successful software development is creating
> and releasing software. This may be the big picture of software
> development, but it is just a small part of successful product
> development, especially in large enterprise software systems. In the
> larger picture world of software product strategy and product
> development, Gantt representations of tasks have considerable
> utility, beyond just the physical media.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Luke Hohmann | CEO | Enthiosys, Inc.

--
Jeff Sutherland, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer
PatientKeeper, Inc.
One Newton Place
275 Washington Street – 2nd Floor
Newton, MA 02458

Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and Inventor of the Agile Scrum Process
Co-Chair, HL7 Orders and Observations Technical Committee
jeff.sutherland@...
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