1. PERT charts are used to plan large complex projects.

The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) involves charts that display scheduled tasks for project completion. This type of flow chart is a common method used by project managers, and is part of the critical path analysis that focuses on essential tasks for project completion. Project managers often design PERT charts for specific parts of complex projects. Each chart begins with one node that branches out into networks of activities, emphasizing relationships among tasks. PERT has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantage: Large Project Planning

2. A PERT chart makes planning large projects easier, according to the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences. It answers three key questions about each activity that help managers identify relationships between tasks and task dependencies. These questions involve how long it will take to complete an activity, and which other activities must occur immediately before and immediately after this activity for effective project completion. PERT is a good way of making these relationships visible in a diagram.

Advantage: Visible Critical Path

3. The critical path includes all activities that cannot be delayed without affecting the project completion date. PERT makes the critical path visible, as explained by the University of Virginia. All tasks not on the critical path can have some slack time without affecting project completion time. When the project manager must delay one task to allocate more time to another, the critical path makes clear which tasks cannot be delayed.

Disadvantage: Complicated Charts

4. PERT charts can be complicated and confusing, with hundreds or even thousands of tasks and dependency relationships, as noted by the University of Pittsburgh. This is especially true of very large projects. PERT diagrams can be expensive to develop, update and maintain.

Disadvantage: Prediction Inaccuracies

5. PERT charts depend on the ability to predict precise time frames for multitudes of tasks. Complicated projects involving many activities and suppliers can

make this prediction difficult, as explained by U.S. Legal Definitions. Unexpected events occur, and sometimes the original estimate of time needed for specific steps was inaccurate. PERT works best in projects where previous experience can be relied on to accurately make these predictions.

Limitations of PERT Although conceptually attractive, and computationally straightforward, the PERT technique, in this simple form, suffers from a theoretical flaw which severely limits it's usability in practice. This is the false assumption that the probability distribution for the PERT "critical path" through the network is the same as the probability distribution for project duration. The fact that a path is longest assuming mean durations everywhere does not assure that the path will always be longest. Depending on the activity times realized in any given situation, the PERT "critical path" may or may not be critical in fact. Since it is possible that the activities on the PERT "critical path" may be done in less than normal time, and some other activities may require more than normal time, other paths through a PERT network may be critical under some circumstances. Hence the probability distribution for the single path determined to be the PERT "critical path" will in general lie to the "left" of the true project duration distribution. Put another way, the mean of the PERT "critical path" will consistently underestimate mean project duration, and the PERT probability of completion by any time will consistently overestimate the true probability of project completion by that time. Thus, the PERT probability distribution for project completion is consistently optimistic, i.e. has a systematic bias causing it to underestimate expected times, and overestimate probability of completion by any given time. Fortunately, there is a more accurate Monte Carlo simulation technique for eliminating this systematic bias. This is the topic of the next chapter.

Disadvantages of pert:
1. Construction project managers may use PERT. PERT, or the Program Evaluation Review Technique, is a tool that helps project managers estimate how long it will take employees to complete the steps in a project. According to San Jose State University, the developers of the Polaris missile program created PERT because the missile program required tasks that did not have standard time estimates for their completion available. PERT includes a time estimate for each project task, considering whether each task is complete ahead of schedule, at its usual time, or late.

Independence
2. The PERT method assumes that a delay that affects one item is independent from a delay affecting another item. According to the University of Florida, this flaw affects both the time it takes to complete an activity and the total time for each individual path. This assumption may not be reasonable. If a tornado knocks down a power line, for example, any task that requires electricity will experience a delay due to the same cause.

Critical Path
3. The critical path method, or CPM, is frequently used along with PERT. The combined method is called PERT/CPM. The critical path determines the fastest rate for completing the overall project. If it takes 12 hours for a truck to deliver a package to a remote facility, even if the workers at the facility complete their task in 4 hours, the truck will still not be there. However, some paths are nearcritical. If it takes the workers 11 hours to do their task instead, and delays make the job take 13 hours, the truck will show up before they are done, and the near-critical path just became the critical path.

Estimation
4. PERT requires project managers to estimate the project completion times. The overall accuracy of this method still requires accurate time estimates. An inaccurate time estimate for one task affects the entire project, since it could lead the project manager to select the wrong critical path. According to the University of Michigan at Flint, the selection of only three time estimates is a

very specific assumption of this model, and other time-estimation tools do not have this weakness.

Task Definition
5. For a project to use PERT, each activity that is part of the project must have a clear definition. Clearly defining the tasks that are part of a project is difficult, especially when the project involves tasks that have not been performed before. This time-estimation method has problems with changes to any task that affect the amount of time the task will take. A hospital needs to use a time-estimation method that allows it to adjust its schedule because of patient emergencies.

Disadvantages

There can be potentially hundreds or thousands of activities and individual dependency relationships The network charts tend to be large and unwieldy requiring several pages to print and requiring special size paper The lack of a timeframe on most PERT/CPM charts makes it harder to show status although colours can help (e.g., specific colour for completed nodes) When the PERT/CPM charts become unwieldy, they are no longer used to manage the project.