Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a procedure through which activities of a project are represented in its appropriate sequence and timing. It is a scheduling technique used to schedule, organize and integrate tasks within a project. PERT is basically a mechanism for management planning and control which provides blueprint for a particular project. All of the primary elements or events of a project have been finally identified by the PERT. In this technique, a PERT Chart is made which represent a schedule for all the specified tasks in the project. The reporting levels of the tasks or events in the PERT Charts is somewhat same as defined in the work breakdown structure (WBS).

The PERT chart is used to schedule, organize and co-ordinate tasks within the project. the objective of PERT chart is to determine the critical path, which comprises critical activities that should be completed on schedule. This chart is prepared with the help of information generated in project planning activities such as estimation of effort, selection of suitable process model for software development and decomposition of tasks into subtasks.

Characteristics of PERT:

The main characteristics of PERT are as following :

1. It serves as a base for obtaining the important facts for implementing the decision-making.
2. It forms the basis for all the planning activities.
3. PERT helps management in deciding the best possible resource utilization method.
4. PERT take advantage by using time network analysis technique.
5. PERT presents the structure for reporting information.
6. It helps the management in identifying the essential elements for the completion of the project within time.
7. It specifies the activities that from the critical path.
8. It describes the probability of completion of project before the specified date.
9. It describes the dependencies of one or more tasks on each other.
10. It represents the project in graphical plan form.

Advantages of PERT:

It has the following advantages :

1. Estimation of completion time of project is given by the PERT.
2. It supports the identification of the activities with slack time.
3. The start and dates of the activities of a specific project is determined.
4. It helps project manager in identifying the critical path activities.
5. PERT makes well organized diagram for the representation of large amount of data.

Disadvantages of PERT:

It has the following disadvantages :

1. The complexity of PERT is more which leads to the problem in implementation.
2. The estimation of activity time are subjective in PERT which is a major disadvantage.
3. Maintenance of PERT is also expensive and complex.
4. The actual distribution of may be different from the PERT beta distribution which causes wrong assumptions.
5. It under estimates the expected project completion time as there is chances that other paths can become the critical path if their related activities are deferred.