BigGantt is a

project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...

app for Jira. Released in 2015, it delivers tools for

project managers A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined ...

, i.e. a

Gantt chart A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationship ...

, and

work breakdown structure A work-breakdown structure (WBS) in project management and systems engineering is a deliverable-oriented breakdown of a project into smaller components. A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that organizes the team's work into ...

Background

In 2012, eight years after the launch of Jira, Atlassian made Atlassian Marketplace available to the public to let independent developers make up for deficiencies of Jira. One of those deficiencies is the fact that Jira centers on modern, agile project management methodologies and neglects traditional,

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several wa ...

tools, such as the Gantt chart. And according to Project Management Institute, in 2017 89% of organizations still used waterfall project management methodologies.

Product

BigGantt utilizes a user's

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

. The app displays Jira tasks on a timeline in the form of colored bars of various lengths. Compared to the original 1910s idea of a bar chart devised by

Henry Gantt Henry Laurence Gantt (; May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is best known for his work in the development of scientific management. He created the Gantt chart in the 1910s. Gan ...

, BigGantt adds contemporary functionalities, i.e. dependencies between tasks on the chart (arrows that link two tasks and change color from green to red when a dependency becomes "impossible"), baselines (shady bars marking the original location of a moved task), critical path, markers (vertical red lines on the timeline indicating crucial dates in the project),

milestones A milestone is a marker of distance along roads. Milestone may also refer to: Measurements *Milestone (project management), metaphorically, markers of reaching an identifiable stage in any task or the project *Software release life cycle state, s ...

. Users can

drag and drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

tasks on a chart. BigGantt is compatible with both Jira Core (essential functionalities) and Jira Software (essential functionalities + visual agile boards). The app is written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

and Angular.

Reception

As of December 2021 BigGantt was used by at least 8824 enterprises. In September 2017 the software was awarded Atlassian Marketplace Vendor of the Year 2017 for fastest cloud growth. In June 2021 SoftwarePlant was acquired by Appfire.{{Cite web, title=Appfire Acquires SoftwarePlant to Disrupt PPM Market, url=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/appfire-acquires-softwareplant-disrupt-ppm-113000598.html, access-date=2021-12-29, website=finance.yahoo.com, language=en-US

References

Project management software Java (programming language) software