Found a simple Gantt chart trick that saved me 6 hours this week

I was drowning trying to track dependencies across 15 tasks for a site rebuild. My usual spreadsheet method had me manually updating dates 3 times a day. On a whim I tried color coding my Gantt chart by priority instead of by task owner in Smartsheet. It cut my review time way down because I could spot bottlenecks instantly without reading every line. Anyone else found a small view change that made a big difference in their tracking?

3 comments

3 Comments

hunt.hayden8d ago

Blew a buddy's mind showing him this exact thing on his project board. He was literally color coding by person and couldn't see why his timeline kept slipping.

wesley6394d ago

Haha oh man, that's brutal. Dude was color coding by person and still thought that was the problem.

-1

juliaa658d ago

Hang on, I gotta push back on this a little. Color coding by priority sounds great in theory but it can actually hide a lot of problems. When you group by person you immediately see who's overloaded or who's waiting on someone else, which is usually the real cause of delays. Priority codes just tell you what's important, not why it's stuck. And if you've got multiple high priority tasks assigned to one person who's already swamped, you still won't spot that bottleneck until it's too late. The dependency tracking is where the real work is, not the review time.