What is Time axis? Benefits, Drawbacks, and Recommended Free Tools!

Time axis is a bar chart-like tool used for schedule management. It visually represents each small task that contributes to accomplishing a larger project, showing when each task should start and finish.

Move Your Work Forward. The Ideal Project and Task Management Tool: Repsona

The vertical axis represents individual tasks, while the horizontal axis represents time (in days, weeks, etc.). It allows you to visualize the overall picture of all the tasks and the plan to accomplish them on a single sheet. This helps in understanding the schedule and the scope of the project intuitively.

By including the names of the individuals responsible for each task, it becomes clear who is accountable, and it also helps identify any imbalances in workload. Knowing who needs to be notified when a task is completed also becomes clear.

Time axis can also include information about task progress, task dependencies, and important milestones. Including various information about the tasks deepens the understanding of the overall work.

Time axis provides a visual representation of the overall schedule, making it easy to understand, share, and grasp the big picture for everyone involved in the work.

By clearly indicating the deadlines for each task, it is suitable for deadline management, allowing for easy confirmation of what needs to be completed by when.

By including the names of the individuals responsible for the tasks, it becomes clear who should be working on each task, preventing tasks from being left unattended. Knowing who is responsible for what and when drives the progress of the team’s work.

While Time axis is suitable for understanding the overall work, it cannot include detailed information about each individual task. Detailed information needs to be managed separately.

Work does not always go according to plan, and unexpected situations may require plan adjustments. If created manually, it can be challenging to adjust the plans each time.

With changes in the plan, there may be a need to change task assignees. It can be difficult to ensure the workload is balanced and to adjust the schedule correctly, as well as to share these changes in real-time.

WBS is the vertical axis item of Time axis, which stands for Work Breakdown Structure and refers to breaking down a large task into smaller tasks and breaking each one down into specific tasks. For example, “cooking” can be broken down into “buying ingredients,” “cutting vegetables,” etc.

Each task in the WBS can be assigned to a different person. The entire team can share a common understanding of what needs to be done to bring the work closer to completion, since they can see the overall picture of the work in concrete terms. Once the WBS is created, it can be used as a starting point to begin planning the overall schedule.

You can also create Time axis in Excel. It can be neatly created by adding a list of tasks vertically, a date horizontally, and coloring the period of execution. You may be able to find free templates. However, there are a few things about Time axis made in Excel that make it difficult to use.

Plans are constantly changing, and Time axis must be continually updated. However, once a clean Excel Time axis is created, it can be difficult to update. You will have to find tasks and time periods from a large table and repaint them in color.

The Excel file format can make it difficult to share the most up-to-date status. Although a file sharing mechanism can be used to solve this problem, each environment can be updated in its own way, so unless rules are established, it will be difficult to know which information is the latest.

It is also necessary to keep the status of each and every task and the discussions related to it in a separate place. Questions and answers about tasks need to be answered using different tools, such as email or chat, so everything cannot be managed in one place.

Repsona is simple and fully equipped with the functions necessary for job management, including Time axis. Anyone can easily create Time axis by drag & drop with easy-to-understand and easy-to-use operation.

Detailed information and comments (chat) can be written for each task, allowing you to carefully manage and check the progress of each task.

If things don’t go as planned, you can easily make adjustments with drag-and-drop and share them in real time. You can immediately see how much work has been gathered by your teammates and manage schedule changes while checking the burden.

With Gantt-san Free Gantt Chart No Sign up No Log in, you can create Time axis the moment you access it without sign up, log in.

There is no need to register as a member, invite members, or do any other tedious work. The created Time axis can be saved on the cloud and shared by URL, or exported and displayed in another browser.