gantt

Introduction

Gantt is a package to create Gantt charts. This are used for scheduling purposes in project management. As different project managers has different needs, this packages offers variety of options to customize charts in very easy way. This document covers how to create charts and deeply walks through styling modifications.

Installation and loading

You can easily install and load package to your R session by executing following commands.

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("piotr-ole/gantt")
library(gantt)

Define your tasks

At the beginning, there is a need to gather your tasks into csv file. Each row should contain tasks in order you want to plot it on a gantt chart. The following columns should be included:

• start date when given task starts
• end date when given task ends
• task string name of task
• type string denoting task type
• stage string describing stage to which task belongs
• control integer saying which tasks are dependent of each other (same value means dependance)

Example task file should have following structure

start	end	task	type	stage	control
01/01/2020	14/01/2020	Create project cost	critical	Planning	1
10/01/2020	20/01/2020	Gather resources	regular	Planning	2
20/01/2020	20/02/2020	Design UI	regular	Development	3
25/02/2020	10/04/2020	Create Backend	critical	Development	3
10/03/2020	10/04/2020	Write tests	regular	Development	4
20/04/2020	01/05/2020	Deployment	critical	Deployment	4

Create task data.frame

As you created CSV file with tasks specification, you can read it into R with read_task() function. In the next examples, the ‘example_task_1.csv’ will be used which comes with the package.

file_path <- system.file("extdata", "example_task_1.csv", package = "gantt")
task <- gantt::read_task(task_file = file_path, delimiter = ';', date_format = '%d/%m/%Y')

The delimiter and date_format has default values as in the example, in the other cases they should be specified.

Create styling list

Next step is to create list with styling parameters, which will be used to draw a Gantt chart. You can do it with create_gantt_config() function by passing parameters as arguments. Function comes with predefined values of all arguments so they do not have to be specified. Later we will explore how changes of parameters affect the plot.

conf <- gantt::create_gantt_config()

Draw Gantt chart

Now drawing a Gantt chart is very simple, you have to execute gantt() function with task and conf as arguments.

gantt::gantt(task = task, conf = conf)

Exploring styles

Here, some cases with different styles will be shown. To view list of all styling options with detailed informations visit create_gantt_config manual.

Case #1

Requirements:

• tasks are connected with paths in all stages
• task labels are black
• tasks bar should be colored by stages

conf <- gantt::create_gantt_config(stage_path = TRUE, control_path = FALSE,
                                   y_axis_color_by_stages = FALSE,
                                   task_bar_color = 'stage')
gantt::gantt(task = task, conf = conf)

Case #2

Requirements:

• have bigger dates labels
• tasks are not connected
• there is no arrows denoting fazes in the plot

conf <- gantt::create_gantt_config(x_axis_text_size = 12,
                                   stage_path = FALSE, control_path = FALSE,
                                   stage_arrows = FALSE
                                   )
gantt::gantt(task = task, conf = conf)

Case #3

Requirements:

• Chart should be titled ‘App development schedule’ and it should be bigger
• tasks are connected within fazes and control groups
• have dates shown in the top of the plot

conf <- gantt::create_gantt_config(plot_title = 'App development schedule', plot_title_size = 15,
                                   stage_path = TRUE, control_path = TRUE,
                                   x_axis_label_position = 'top'
                                   )
gantt::gantt(task = task, conf = conf)