<p>I've worked on a few projects managed through the use of a Gantt chart.  Some of these have has a massive number of tasks and the project manager spends all their time wrestling with MS Project instead of making good choices.</p>

<p>I can see the point if there are a number of separate teams working towards something (e.g. legal, IT, marketing) to manage a project overall.</p>

<p>Has anyone participated in a software development project that has used a Gantt chart with any success?</p>

A Gantt chart is only useful if it has sufficient details for a project manager to see what is the status of the project, and to have dependencies and resources properly accounted for.
You can always stick several sheets together with sticky tape.
The discipline of analyzing the project - breaking it down into phases, steps, deliverables,  determining the resource requirements is probably even more important than printing out a pretty chart.
Many of my non-trivial development projects have benefited from the sensible use of project planning tools.