Project Management

Project Management

Use of PERT in Project Management

Project Evaluation and Review Technique, PERT, is the tool to plan and schedule several interrelated works of the complex and large project under consideration. It is an old technique and have been using since 1950 in United States. PERT technique is highly useful in planning and scheduling the extensive projects such that building construction, development of software and other projects. The basic purpose of PERT is to optimize resource and time constrained systems for the organization. The tool of PERT employs the representation via network criteria in order to focus and capture the parallel or precedence relationships concerning various tasks of the considered project. The easy example to comprehend the relationships of precedence and parallel with respect to the project is that the frame of any building to construct is the initial phase which would be followed by the construction of roof. The construction of roof is not possible without the frame work of the building. It is the example of preceding relationship of PERT. However, there are some tasks which could be utilized parallel in building construction such as installation of electrical system along with plumbing system.

Figure 1 Network Showing the Example of PERT

In addition, PERT also assists in managing the cost along with other planning elements. It considers the cost management of project via employing the PERT/cost System. It facilitates the cost planning through the model of cost control. In this regard, PERT provides the graph demonstrating the demands of feasible budget as a function of time. The profiles of resources usage, based on the latest start time as well as earliest starting time, help in constructing the graph. This model will permit the management team to identify the overruns of costs concerning several pertinent activities prior their completion (Chinneck, 2009). ...