TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction

In this article, we’ll outline the steps to take to get the most out of planning in Gantt.


We talk about planning your phases, building out the lower-level detail, showing dependencies, and then creating milestones.


Hopefully, you’ve already created the project itself in Sharktower; if you still need to do that, check out this article.


Step 1 - Phases

We recommend thinking about your project phases at the start. This will help you figure out the bigger picture, you may not know all the detail yet but it is good practice to build out the high level plan first.


  1. To create a phase you click theIcon Description automatically generatedicon in the bottom right of the screen.
  2. Enter title, description, and dates for the Phase then click Add.





Step 2 - Adding the detail

                Adding Activities 

Attached to the phases we now want to break down what is involved in each phase; these lower level pieces of work are called Activities and can be created by clicking the Icon Description automatically generated again.




Adding work items

These are the lowest level of detail relating to your project's work and can be directly connected to each activity – for example, if your activity was to “Conduct customer research”, your underlying work items might be things like “Identify a list of customers”, “Compose comms”, etc – i.e. the specific deliverables and actions which will enable the completion of the overall activity.

  1. Make sure you have the activity selected (you’ll see the box on the right-hand side with the details of the activity.

  2. Click the Plus icon (Icon Description automatically generated) and choose which work item (task, story, decision, risk issue) you’d like to create.
     
  3. You can add the detail and then click Create.



Tip: Don't forget to link the work item to an activitiy which helps give context and break down the overall work. 

Step 4 – Outcomes (or milestones)

Now we have our phases, activities and work items added, our plan is starting to take shape. We can start thinking about adding our outcomes – think of these as milestones or key deliverables you want to track. These will appear on the Project Overview page as well as any tailored reporting coming from Sharktower.

An outcome can be added on its own or linked to activities (note that this is a key difference between our two planning styles).

  1. Click the Plus icon (Icon Description automatically generated) and choose Outcome.

  2. Add a title, assignee, and type. A Business Outcome can have a value associated with it (this is great for benefits realisation) – we recommend these are used to capture the high level goal of each project, whereas Project Milestones can be used to capture the deliverables and milestones along the way.


Tip: An outcome has its own status if it is not linked to an activitiy. If it is linked to an activity then it inherits the status of the activity (or activities) leading to it; if there are multiple activities, the outcome will inherit the “worst” status.



Once you've created your plan it is ready to share with your team! Unlike Delivery Path you don't need to publish. We recommend using the plan as a live communication tool, when holding update meetings or catch-ups with your team have the plan open and you can make real-time updates, start from the today line (red line representing today) and look at what has been completed then what is planned.