Introduction to Project Management

PROC GANTT draws, in line-printer, high-resolution graphics, or full-screen mode, a bar chart of the schedules computed by PROC CPM. Such a bar chart is referred to as a Gantt chart in project management terminology. In addition to the Schedule data set, PROC GANTT can also use the Calendar, Workday, and Holiday data sets (that were used by PROC CPM when scheduling the activities in the project) to mark holidays and weekends and other nonwork periods appropriately on the Gantt chart. You can indicate target dates, deadlines, and other important dates on a Gantt chart by adding CHART variables to the Schedule data set. Furthermore, the GANTT procedure can indicate milestones on the chart by using a DURATION variable in the Schedule data set.

Precedence information can be used by PROC GANTT in either Activity-on-Node or Activity-on-Arc format to produce a Logic bar chart that shows the precedence relationships between the activities. The precedence information, required for drawing the network logic, can be conveyed to PROC GANTT using the Activity data set or a Logic data set, as described in Chapter 8: The GANTT Procedure.

The Gantt procedure also supports an automatic text annotation facility, using the Label data set, which is designed specifically for labeling Gantt charts independently of the SAS/GRAPH Annotate facility. The specifications in this data set enable you to print label strings with a minimum of effort and data entry while providing the capability for more complex chart labeling situations.

The Gantt procedure is Web-enabled. The HTML= option enables you to specify a variable in the Schedule data set that defines a URL for each activity. If you route the Gantt chart to an HTML file using the Output Delivery System, then you can click on a schedule bar and browse text or other descriptive information about the associated activity. You also use this information to create custom HTML files with drill-down graphs. PROC GANTT also produces an Imagemap data set that contains the outline coordinates for the schedule bars used in the Gantt chart that can be used to generate HTML MAP tags.

As with PROC CPM, PROC GANTT also defines a macro variable named _ORGANTT that has a character string indicating if the procedure terminated successfully. Figure 3.2 illustrates the flow of data in and out of PROC GANTT.