The Program (or Project) Evaluation and Review Technique, commonly abbreviated PERT, is a model for project management designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.
PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was able to incorporate uncertainty by making it possible to schedule a project while not knowing precisely the details and durations of all the activities. It is more of an event-oriented technique rather than start- and completion-oriented, and is used more in R&D-type projects where time, rather than cost, is the major factor.
• A PERT chart is a tool that facilitates decision making; The first draft of a PERT chart will number its events sequentially in 10s (10, 20, 30, etc.) to allow the later insertion of additional events.
• Two consecutive events in a PERT chart are linked by activities, which are conventionally represented as arrows in the diagram above.
• The events are presented in a logical sequence and no activity can commence until its immediately preceding event is completed.
• The planner decides which milestones should be PERT events and also decides their “proper” sequence.
• A PERT chart may have multiple pages with many sub-tasks.
• Critical Path is the longest possible continuous pathway taken from the initial event to the terminal event. It determines the total calendar time required for the project; and, therefore, any time delays along the critical path will delay the reaching of the terminal event by at least the same amount.
Benefits:
PERT is useful as it provides the following information.
• Expected Project completion time.
• Probability of completion before a specified date.
• The Critical path activities that directly impacts the completion time.
• Activity Start and End dates.
Limitations:
• The activity estimates are somewhat subjective and depend on judgment.
• Under estimation of project completion time due to alternate paths becoming critical path.
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