QUANTITATIVE METHODS FOR BUSINESS

Ms. Dang Thi Uyen Thao

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
CHAPTER 12
13/05/2021
Full name: Nguyễn Bảo Hân
ID: BABAIU19029

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERT

Project management has been appeared long time ago, some of the ancient projects are The
creation of the Egyptian Pyramids or The erection of the Great Wall of China. In the
twentieth century, The Polaris Project of the US Navy happened to be such legendary
project, its first success in 1960 relied much on the management's innovative approach,
particularly the invention of PERT.

PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique ) was developed by SPO (Special
Projects Office)- a unit created by the Navy to manage project. By specific definition, PERT
is a project management planning tool for estimating how long it will take to complete a
project in a realistic time frame. PERT charts are used to plan work inside a project, making
scheduling and coordinating team members easier.

When preparing the PERT network, firstly they reversed the process which mean they started
with the last event and worked backward to the very first event. Secondly, the technician in
charge of the work estimated the time to finish one of the event, it included the best, the
worst and the most likely time. Then they established a range of uncertainty to complete the
particular activity. Thirdly, important information is computed and automatically printed out
with mostly the form of the slacked sort. This slacked sort printout showed the slack area and
the events happened in the critical path leading to the program objective. Thanks to PERT,
program managers could also be able to locate the critical path and slack areas in the
network.
Overall, PERT significantly contributed to the success of The Polaris Project, nowadays, this
method is still used widely in many projects since it help managers to manage projects
easier.