Gantt for Agile DLC

Some time ago I found interesting post "The demise of the Gantt Chart in Agile Software Projects" by David Christiansen about applicability of Gantt diagram for planning of Agile processes.

In short, idea of the post was that Gantt is not acceptable for Agile Life Circles like Scrum. And main reason of this is independent nature of development Tasks.

I just want to figure my vison of the problem, not pretending for the last word in this discussion.

Scrum works with very simple approach for planning named backlog. Developers just have stack with User Stories (Independent Pieces of Functionality to be developed). This stack slicked onto Iteratoions with fixed duration. And we have Velocity - second parameter of Agile plan - this is speed of development of given team.

Gantt is tool for planning of DEPENDENT tasks. This tool can support both planning and optimising (using critical path) of complex projects.

My vision is that backlog and Gantt is two polar cases; or tools for different work. Gantt really not needed for developers if project is coming in well known technological and business domain, User Stories has no relations. But imagine complex project in some new technological domain. Developers need spikes (short learning and/or prototyping) for testing of workability of Architecture. Imagine situation when Customer asked for creation DataWarehouse and wrapping it with business logic. In short, complex project with significant Architectural part can't be planned with backlog tool. They need Gantt.

And second idea. Even if Gantt don't needed for developers in case of simple project, it can be needed for Managers as layout for project tracking, budget planning etc. Gantt can be easily adopted for Scrum Project Plan: Iterations will be presented as Task Groups and User Stories will be shown as Tasks.