I have long been aware of the importance of developing a chronology in working on the life of a specific ancestor. A simple ordering of the events in an ancestor's life from their birth to their death helps the researcher to see unaccounted for time periods, gaps in research, and records that have not been accessed. A chronology can also be an excellent synopsis of an ancestor's life, albeit a limited one. It provides a different perspective on an ancestor than does a family group or pedigree chart and can even be the framework for creating an ancestral biography.
The rest of the article on chronologies was posted as The Space Time Continuum on my website.