The illusion of Gantt
This post was originally written in Italian and translated using AI. If you notice any translation errors or unclear passages, please let me know.
If someone asked you “How long does it take to get to Amsterdam from Rome traveling 🚶 on foot?” would you be able to provide an accurate estimate? You could probably give a rough evaluation, but in reality, even after a few days of walking, you wouldn’t be able to give precise details.
In project management, the concept expressed above often gets crystallized inside a roadmap. And here’s where time, resources, and the number of “things to do” inevitably end up inside the famous Gantt chart. The result?
- The product manager is happy because they get the answer to their question “how long will it take?”
- The project manager is happy because they can estimate costs based on resource usage.
- The team is happy because they have a vision of the macro-activities spread over time.
All good? No, it’s PURE ILLUSION!
They’re all simply walking toward a distant goal with an empirical approximation and, at the first difficulty, the Castle of Gantt will have to be rebuilt from scratch because of a single change!
The difference with Agile planning is not committing to horizons you can’t yet see. If this statement seems to clash with your beliefs, don’t blame yourself — you simply don’t know Agile planning.