Program Evaluation Review Technique and its Importance

Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT)

It is a project management tool that provides a graphical representation of a project's timeline. PERT breaks down the individual tasks of a project for analysis.  

PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects in 1957.

PERT analyzes the time required to complete each task and its associated dependencies to determine the minimum time to complete a project.

Purpose of PERT Charts

Project managers can use PERT charts to:

• Set a realistic timetable for project completion
• Identify tasks that need to be shortened if the overall project time needs to be reduced
• Identify tasks that can be carried out simultaneously
• Identify slack time where certain tasks are not as time-critical to the overall deadline.

How to draw a PERT chart 

We can design PERT chart with the help of nodes and arrows.

PERT offers a management tool, which relies on arrow and node diagrams of activities and events: arrows represent the activities or work necessary to reach the events or nodes that indicate each completed phase of the total project

Nodes represent events or milestones in your project. You can use either numbered circles or numbered boxes. 

Arrows represent the activities or tasks. The direction of the arrows shows the sequence of tasks. The direction of the arrows shows the sequence of tasks. Diverging arrows indicate that you can complete those tasks concurrently. 

Follow these steps to put your PERT chart together: 

• List all of the activities involved in the project. 
• Consider dependencies. 
• Place nodes and arrows based on the information you have gathered. 
• Add completion time for each activity. 

Critical Path Method (CPM)

We can determine a realistic timeframe for any project with the help of PERT chart. This process is called the Critical Path Method.

PERT and CPM are complementary tools, because "CPM employs one time estimation and one cost estimation for each activity; PERT may utilize three time estimates (optimistic, expected, and pessimistic) and no costs for each activity.

• optimistic time: the minimum possible time required to accomplish an activity or a path, assuming everything proceeds better than is normally expected
• expected time: the best estimate of the time required to accomplish an activity or a path, accounting for the fact that things don't always proceed as normal (the implication being that the expected time is the average time the task
• pessimistic time: the maximum possible time required to accomplish an activity or a path, assuming everything goes wrong (but excluding major catastrophes).