Ooooooo, I despise Gantt charts. I’m trying to figure out timelines and tasks and resources and milestones, and I just keep thinking that this is the most ridiculous use of anyone’s time. Especially mine.

I’ve updated Gantt Project on my computer, and it’s not very friendly at all. It’s not the fault of the programmers. I’m sure they are totally fantastic, and I can’t complain about having a groovy open-source program to do this stuff. I’m just not sold on the value of spending all this time to do something that seems so obvious. Just make a list, delegate some tasks, and get to work!

I don’t know all the random things that will start popping up, so I’ll actually have to spend time updating the thing, too. Maybe daily. Oh brother.

The whole thing is so subjective. How should I know how long this particular task is going to take? How should I know the percent complete?

So I have an end date. And a begin date. And some milestones that I know.

I guess the trick would be to figure out which tasks can go on simultaneously, and which tasks are dependent on other tasks. That gives me a certain amount of parallel processing. But if some of the resources – the subject matter experts – the doers – are tasked on multiple things, then they’re probably not going to be working on many things at the same time. And then – they have other things to do, too. That can become political, since then you have to get decisions on priority.

There is an implicit methodology, but I don’t yet grasp its ins and outs – and I’m fairly sure that I don’t entirely agree with some of the premises.

To be valuable, it seems as though there should be a master resource database where common tasks have historical data on how long it actually takes to complete. Most of these things could be templated and conceptually modeled with a different system. Then there would be some mediating functionality to enter in whatever bits of data that you know have to be added and the chart would then be produced automatically. The chart is just a a graphical output.

I don’t think in terms of charts. That’s not my “learning style.” To work with charting as a tool seems wasteful – you’re always reinventing everything. I guess a real project manager would have the internal knowledge-base to make better charts, but my estimations are bound to be off. Nevertheless – here is the drop-dead date for the project. And here is the drop-dead date for delivery of the chart.

This is more subjective than grading essays, but it pretends to be some sort of hard data.

Usually I’m invigorated by learning new things, but this doesn’t interest me at all. This is like word problems with trains – I want to banish them forever.

Bah. It’s not that I can’t do it. If I couldn’t do it, it would just be a matter of some research and/or training to remedy the problem.

No, it’s worse than that because I don’t want to do it. Doing things I don’t want to do is incredibly difficult for me. That sounds so childish, I know. We all do things we don’t want to do all the time. I’ve got to unjam this wall of resistance now. Otherwise, I’ll be up all night fighting it and I’ll make life unnecessarily harsh for myself. So I’ve got to trick myself into doing it instead of focusing on that dread in my stomach.

This brings me back to the days of writing my dissertation. Not to be TMI, but menstrual cramps are not helping the situation.

Maybe I’ll just chart out the tasks as a plain old list, where I can rearrange everything and figure out the task dependencies, and then just transfer that to the program as the last step. Some background music might help with that. I can be enjoying my last weekend day – and enjoying the fact that because I have to do this, I don’t have to do some other stuff that otherwise I would be doing – and make it as painfree as possible.

Sounds like a plan.

But…. ooooooooooh, I hate Gantt charts.