From complexity to clarity: How Structure PPM and Gantt transform projects

Many organizations struggle with high-level visibility, managing complex dependencies, or consistently hitting their deadlines. Whether the root cause is ineffective tools, processes, or miscommunication, these challenges can undermine your ability to deliver projects on time and within budget.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) found that 31% of IT projects never meet their goal, and 14% fail altogether. Try to imagine how many hours are wasted. Think of how frustrating it must be to watch these projects go nowhere, and how hard it is raising morale for the next one.

Outside of the IT space, McKinsey found that large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted.

In a world where AI can generate videos from simple prompts, there must be a better way to manage projects, right? The answer involves both modern software and the right project management practices.

In this blog, we’ll explore how Structure PPM and Gantt Charts for Structure PPM could be your solution to your project management problems. can help you streamline your project management, enabling you to complete projects on time and within budget. These tools bring order to Jira, helping you see the big picture and tackle even the most complex projects with ease.

Address the lack of high-level visibility

Effective communication within and across teams is essential to productivity, yet many organizations lack the high-level visibility necessary to align everyone. When teams aren’t on the same page, the result is:

• Misalignment: Each team needs to be aligned with company-wide values. In order to ensure everyone is up to date with the latest company initiatives, you need to see the big picture and ensure any necessary updates are relayed to every team.

• Lost productivity: Each team member needs to know who is working on each task and when those tasks are due. If they don’t have that information, tasks will slip through the cracks, or the same work will be done by multiple people.

• Frustration: According to Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, a lack of transparency leads to employee disengagement. Employees don’t feel connected to their company when they don’t know what’s going on outside of their own tasks.

One way to ensure your teams have visibility is to organize key project information (deadlines, budget, tasks, etc.) in an easy-to-digest format. Being able to view your entire portfolio in one place is a game changer.

Gantt charts are helpful because they lay out information visually. They are easy to skim if you’re looking for something specific but contain enough data for you to see the big picture as well. They are also flexible, so you can update them in real time as things change.

As a project manager, this type of tool makes it easy for you to show off to your boss and implement real change in the process.

Simplify complex dependencies

There’s no avoiding complex projects, but you can take steps to simplify your dependencies. How can you tell if your dependencies are too complex? The signs include:

• Overload: If you and your team can’t easily identify what needs to be done next, it’s a sign that your dependencies are too convoluted.

• Confusion: Teams need to know who’s responsible for what. If assignees aren’t clear, tasks can be delayed, causing a cascade of missed deadlines.

• Project overlap: When a project contains multiple sub-projects or overlaps with other initiatives, it’s vital to know where dependencies lie.

• Team frustration: When projects become too complex, people are less inclined to engage fully, leading to delays and disengagement.

For agile teams, the solution for overly complex dependencies is clear communication and continuous collaboration. That doesn't mean just having more meetings. It means finding simple – and most importantly fast – ways to communicate the work that is ongoing and who is working on it.

Standups are great for that, but project managers also need tools to break down goals, milestones, and dependencies into manageable chunks. This is where visualizations come in handy, helping teams instantly see workloads, identify unnecessary steps, and stay aligned – all without needing excessive meetings.

Meet your deadlines

Companies often waste significant resources due to project performance issues, with missed deadlines being one of the biggest culprits. When deadlines are missed, it creates a ripple effect that can lead to increased costs, delays in other projects, and strained relationships with stakeholders. 

Other impacts include:

• Productivity: You have to scramble to complete the project, and that cuts into time you could have been spending on your next project.

• Speed: Missed deadlines can cause a domino effect. If you were late starting a project because the previous one took longer than expected, you may have to work faster to meet the new project’s deadline, or you could end up missing it again.

• Patience: Stakeholders and customers expect you to meet your deadline every time. When you miss it, that negatively impacts those relationships and can ultimately cause the customer to look elsewhere in the future.

• Morale: Feeling the pressure to meet a deadline can be very stressful, and it’s hard for teams to work under stress. Being told you’ve missed a deadline after working hard to try to meet it is also frustrating for employees.

We can’t get rid of deadlines, but there are ways to successfully handle high-pressure deadlines. This can be done by encouraging people to make checklists, finding ways to overcome blockers, and using your tech stack to help.

No one should be plotting our their strategy and roadmap in Excel these days – no matter how small your team is. Managing your dependencies as stated above is a massive help, but the modern workplace needs modern equipment to thrive. 

In order to meet your deadlines, you need organization, tracking, and the ability to detect overload and risks in your plans early on. If you don’t have software support to do that, you are mostly just guessing, which isn’t the most reliable method. 

This is where Structure PPM could come in handy. It’s a powerful project management tool that’s native to Jira, but offers spreadsheet-like views to empower you to easily visualize all the work across your entire portfolio in a single place. It allows you to manage issues, track progress, and then report on it all when the time comes.

Adding Gantt Charts for Structure allows you to do more than visualize your projects, leveraging real-time Jira data to get all your plans in a single chart. It’s a simple yet effective way to show your entire team if you’re on track or if a deadline is under threat. 

The ultimate duo: Structure PPM and Gantt Charts for project efficiency

When you combine Structure PPM and Gantt Charts for Structure PPM, you unlock a cleaner and trackable Jira. Using them together provides you with a comprehensive solution to the most common project management challenges, including a lack of high-level visibility, complex dependencies, and missed deadlines. 

With all your resources and projects centralized, you can make informed decisions faster, while also benefiting from both executive and execution-level overviews.

Are you ready to overcome your project management challenges?

Try Gantt Charts for Structure PPM