2012 has been the most awesome year since we started Chandoo.org.
The credit for this goes to our community of Excel users – that is you.
For practically every day of 2012, you have inspired me (and all of us at Chandoo.org) to learn something new, share and make you awesome. I know I say this many times, but I can never feel enough – Thank you for your support to Chandoo.org.
Apart from you, there are many other amazing people & companies that played a role in our success. In this post, let me highlight them & express my sincere gratitude.
People who helped me in 2012:
Teachers & Gurus:
Running a business, website & family requires a lot of motivation, fresh ideas & learning. Thanks to several wonderful teachers & inspiring individuals who gave me the strength I need this year.
Excel & Visualization Teachers:
Jon Peltier, Dick Kusleika, Debra Dalgleish, Mike Alexandar, Daniel Ferry, Robert Mundigl, Hui, Francis, Rob Collie, Bill Jelen and many more.
Chandoo.org Forum Members:
Hui, Sajan, NarayanK, BobHC, Faseeh, SirJB, Luke and all other regulars & Ninjas who contribute to my Excel knowledge everyday.
Business & Motivation
Andy Sernovitz, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, Avinash, Brandon Pearce, Alok, Pat, Chris, MrMoneyMustache, Jacob, Patrick and many more.
Technology
Amit Agarwal, John Gruber and many more sourced thru FlipBoard, Twitter & Pulse
Authors
As I was traveling quite a bit (1.5 months each in Thailand & Australia and few weeks with in India) I could not read as much as I wanted to. But I did manage to read & learn from some amazing authors, books. Special thanks to these wonderful authors.
- Chris Guillebeau $100 Startup
- Sam Walton Made in America
- Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast & Slow
- Benjamin Graham Intelligent Investor
- Bill Bryson Down Under
- John F. Love McDonalds – Behind the arches
- Danielle S. Fairhurst Business Analysis using Excel
- Rob Collie DAX Formulas for PowerPivot
- Bill Jelen PowerPivot in Excel
And many other…
Note: All the book links to Amazon are affiliate links. That means, if you purchase something after clicking on them, I get a few cents 
Partners, Affiliates & Supporters
To make Chandoo.org successful, I collaborate with many great minds in this industry. Some of these remarkable people are,
Chandoo.org Partners
- Danielle at Plum Solutions (and her assistant Susan) helped me arrange first ever Excel & Dashboard classes in Australia.
- Paramdeep at Pristine Education (and their staff) helped us offer various financial modeling training programs thru Chandoo.org.
- Daniel Ferry at ExcelHero.com helped me offer Excel School training along with his academy so that many of you could become awesome in Excel.
- Ankush at ActiKnow Consulting for helping many of our clients with custom Excel solutions.
Our Affiliates:
This year was great for many of our affiliates too. Thanks to their support, we had more customers and they had more revenues. Some of our most prominent affiliates are,
Dashboard Spy, Francis, Daniel Ferry, Debra Dalgleish, Philip, Ken Puls, Oscar, Jimmy Pena, Victor Chan, Alan Murray and many more.
Our Supporters:
Many people selflessly spend their time & energy promoting our cause – to make you awesome. My sincere thanks and love goes to,
Hui, SirJB, BobHC, Luke, Faseeh, Sajan, Narayank and all our Forum regular members & Ninjas.
Special thanks to Fabrice, Robert, Oscar & others who regularly to link to us and spread the good word.
Press:
Special thanks to Kumara Swamy from Telegraph India for featuring me in an article this year.
Customers & Readers
This year, close to 5,000 of you blessed me with your product purchases from us. More than 55,000 of you are now part of our RSS / Newsletter community. Many more continue to join us each day. Thank you so much for inviting me in to your life & taking time to learn from us.
Many thanks to KPMG, Renault Nissan, Ecobank, SEEK, and many other corporate clients for supporting us this year.
I am also thankful to our Excel forum members.
Special thanks to
- Attendees of various live classes conducted by me this year in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane & Chennai.
- People in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane & Perth who met me when I was in Australia.
- People in Chennai who met me for coffee.
- Hui & Family, Danielle & Family for sharing some of my evenings very nice and memorable.
Our Staff
Most of what we did at Chandoo.org not even remotely possible without of staff. I am amazed at their level of commitment and support to our mission to make you awesome. My heartfelt thanks to,
- Ravindra: for helping with various training enrollments, emails & customer service
- Vijay: for teaching VBA
- Sameer: for answering student doubts in training programs
- Sujatha: for providing customer care & email support
- Pothi: for taking care of our server & site infrastructure
- Chittibadrayya: for taking care of all the book-keeping & accounting aspect of our business
Special thanks to Neel (our iPhone developer) too.
Websites & Companies that helped me in 2012
I am thankful to Microsoft for making Excel so awesome.
I am also thankful to,
Email & Productivity: Google, iPhone
Website, Hosting & E-commerce: WordPress, GoDaddy, Wishlist Member, KnownHost, Amazon, PayPal, E-Junkie, 2Checkout, EBS
Community & Connection: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Skydrive
Software: Paint.NET, Mozy, Notepad ++, Camtasia & Snagit, Skype
There are many other software, companies and websites that help me every day. I am really thankful to each and every one of these. Detailed listing here.
Last but not least…
There is someone else that deserve utmost thanks for everything I do at Chandoo.org.
- My family: Jo & kids support me and Chandoo.org in numerous ways. They shower me with love, humor and support everyday so that I can be awesome at what I do.
- All my close friends & relatives: for supporting me & encouraging me to do better.
PS… something for you:
Here is a nice little surprise for you. Go ahead and download it. Unlock the secret message.
PS: Incase you have difficulty downloading the file, see it in action here.
15 Responses to “A Gantt Chart Alternative – Gantt Box Chart”
That's a great idea.
Maybe the planned End Date should be highlight more.
I don't know how it would look like (nor how to do it yet), but what if instead of finishing the bold line to the best case End Date, it finishes to the realistic End Date?
The idea is ok, I think other project management tools have this, already? Maybe not.
Gantt charts in my view are about the signal most unless thing in the world, theres no way you can look at one thats more that a little complex and understand what it's telling you. I'm going to write a diatribe on project management at some point, its one of my pet areas I think!! 😉
The issue I have with this chart Chandoo, is that Tasks need to be linked to each other, so they should inherit the uncertainty, which would mean the as you moved down chart the lines would be miles apart for later tasks, and you might have to add lots of lines for subsequent tasks to cover the various outcome of it's parents.
Having said that, for the high level board summary, it's a nice way to go, it it appeals to the management 😉
thanks Chandoo, great post.
Ross
Whoooa !!! That's a very clever idea Chandoo. I really love it.
I think i'll update my gantt project sheet with that idea soon (remember my template ?)
@ross : you can link start date to the end date of the previous task in your data. The only problem I still se is to which end date (real ? planned ? best ?) in order to have average amount of information.
If best end date, you'll tend to increase uncertainty at the end of chain, although if you link to real end date, uncertainty will be decreased too much, leading in both cases to wrong management direction.
Maybe planned till the task is finished then real will do the job ?
Hey chandoo, this looks good and this would definite add value in production planning / scheduling. Uncertainity in finishing a task is very high in production scheduling and this could give an insight or a bird eye view of possible shipments we can have....
I've always been frustrated by the limitations of gantt charts. Will definitely use this, I've always struggled with how to succinctly communicate the uncertainty of certain tasks without confusing stakeholders.
I like this, I think it's a very effective way of showing how a timeline can change and which parts of a project need close attention.
@Cyril / @Ross: I would intially link the the start date to the planned end date of the previous task, with the chart updating when a task has been completed to reflect the true end date.
Or what about giving a drop-down selection box to allow the user to see the chart based on planned/best-case/worst-case end dates?
Like the idea. Have found that Excel is more flexible than MS Project for graphical solutions. The "Best Case"\"Worst Case" metrics are theoretically appealing but once the project and\or phase commences their reliability diminishes. A chart like the above that showed Planned Start, Planned End, Replan End Start, Replan End Date, Number of Replans the Start and End Dates, and Actual would provide an active, actionable view of each task\phase. It would also highlight the areas which are riskiest.
It is always amazing how flexible excel can be.
My question is how would the chart show a scenario where the date moved up? If a task is dropped or the duration of the task is significantly reduced by applying more people or machinery to the task, the dates will move up.
The gantt chart has been around for a long time, but it is still quite useful to show progress.
Cheers,
B
I like the idea but seems bit complicated in case of long projects involving numerous activity.
Also, reading and explaining is required hence not feasible where plans are just send to audience for approval.
Cheers
SY
Great idea Chandoo,
When I was reading this idea regarding delivery dates, another thought popped into my mind, how can you show the uncertainty with MONEY!!
In this case, applies to cost management or even a normal budget, you think?
Would Box Chart and Gannt Chart help to understand the best case, middle case and worst case when money is spend or planned with these three risks are involved?
I imagine that this chart could help people who write their budgets get a better understanding of risks affecting their spending.
Peter
Chandoo,
I like it. How would you display an entry once it has been completed (actual)?
Thank you,
Matt
From what you have shown so far I think that this box Gantt chart is awesome! I think that this could be an extremely useful tool.
I can't wait to learn how to make my own charts in Excel.
Will the methods that you are going to teach us work in 2003 as well?
[...] Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box [...]
You need to read Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain. The uncertainty you are looking for should be accounted for in a project buffer. Not at each task level.
Further you should spend time understanding Agile Development. This would have you plan only in 1-3week iterations. This allows you to embrace changes to work not yet started, and for your customer to re-direct your course at regular intervals (after each iteration) throughout your project. keyword search: Agile Scrum
These items will show you that you are solving a tracking problem for something that you can entirely avoid!
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