Where GANTT Charts Should Be Banned

GANTT charts have some utility when a Product Owner has to present to naive users (non-Agile managers) to get a project funded.

Once implementation of the plan starts, the team enters the fog of war, just like a squad of troops entering battle. Military generals fully understand that once the enemy is engaged, all plans are shattered and the front line must self-organize to win the day.

Taking the GANTT chart into a Scrum Sprint or XP iteration has people look at a planning document that is absolutely wrong after the first day. At best it gobbles up a full time resource in the futile effort to keep the chart up to date. Even worse, it may lead the team to do the wrong thing and lose, i.e. a failed Sprint goes up in flames.

The GANTT chart was banned from Sprints for these reasons when I led the initial implementation of Scrum in 1993. 13 years later I don't see any reason to change this. In fact after consulting with leading companies up and down Silicon Valley and in other parts of the world this past year, getting their burndown charts updated daily and visible to the entire company is a top priority. Any distraction by GANTT charts is an exercise in futility.