The Program Evaluation and Review Technique

[dimpy.handa]

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique commonly abbreviated PERT is a model for project management invented by United States Department of Defense's US Navy Special Projects Office in 1958 as part of the Polaris mobile submarine launch project. This project was a direct response to the Sputnik crisis.
This project model was the first of its kind, a revival for scientific management, founded in fordism and taylorism. Though every company now have their own "project model" of some kind, they all resemble PERT in some respect. Only DuPont corporations critical path method was invented at roughly the same time as PERT.

 

[swatiraohnlu]

Project management technique that shows the time taken by each component of a project, and the total time required for its completion. PERT breaks down the project into events and activities, and lays down their proper sequence, relationships, and duration in the form of a network. Lines connecting the events are called paths, and the longest path resulting from connecting all events is called the critical path. The length (duration) of the critical path is the duration of the project, and any delay occurring along it delays the whole project. PERT is a scheduling tool, and does not help in finding the best or the shortest way to complete a project.

PERT is a model for project management.

 

[dimpy.handa]

PERT planning involves the following steps:
1. Identify the specific activities and milestones : The activities are the tasks required to complete the project. The milestones are the events marking the beginning and end of one or more activities. It is helpful to list the tasks in a table that in later steps can be expanded to include information on sequence and duration.
2. Determine the proper sequence of the activities : This step may be combined with the activity identification step since the activity sequence is evident for some tasks. Other tasks may require more analysis to determine the exact order in which they must be performed.
3. Construct a network diagram : Using the activity sequence information, a network diagram can be drawn showing the sequence of the serial and parallel activities. For the original activity-on-arc model, the activities are depicted by arrowed lines and milestones are depicted by circles or "bubbles".
4. Estimate the time required for each activity : A distinguishing feature of PERT is its ability to deal with uncertainty in activity completion times.