Program Evaluation and Review Technique

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.

PERT is basically a method for analyzing the tasks involved in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to complete the total project.

This project model was the first of its kind, a revival for scientific management, founded in Fordism and Taylorism. Though every company now has 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.

The most famous part of PERT is the "PERT Networks", charts of timelines that interconnect. PERT is intended for very large-scale, one-time, complex, non-routine projects.

See also

• project planning

External links

• http://www.nnh.com/ev/pert2.html
• http://www.netmba.com/operations/project/pert