Today we're talking about how to create a PERT chart. So PERT stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique. It's been around for some time. It was actually created in the 50s by the US Navy to manage the Polaris submarine missile project.
Around the same time, The private sector created a similar technique called the critical path technique that you probably heard as well in the project management arena. But they're very similar. They both help to plan, schedule, and control projects, and they both use a precedence diagram in their technique. So there are two rules to create a PERT chart.
The first one is the task or the activities are represented in the diagram. as arrows, which I'll show you in just a moment. And you may have heard this in the project management arena. It's called the activity on arrow diagrams, because in the graphical depiction or the diagram, the activity is literally sitting on the arrow.
The second rule is that the milestone dates are represented as nodes. And again, I'll show you both. But if you think about it, we do this all the time, not only in our daily lives, but our project management life. So if we take one activity and show it on a PERT chart, we have collect project data is the activity.
So it's sitting on the arrow. And these are the nodes. The estimate of time to do this is one day. So we have to collect the project data before we can submit the project data.
So this is a simple one activity depiction. So if we expand this out to an example, With multiple activities, we can see that the circles are the nodes, those are the milestone dates, and then the arrows are the activities. So the numbers sitting on top of the arrows, that's the estimate, a duration of time it takes to complete that activity. And then also, if you look at these, you can see that when this milestone is done, it can initiate multiple activities. In this case, activity, this.
these two activities are initiated when that one's complete. So that's why we reference a precedence diagram. So a precedence diagram means that something has to precede that activity being done.
But as you can see, it can become quite complex, and some people can still do this manually, but it helps tremendously using a tool. So if you need a tool to help you with your PERT chart, then sign up for our software now at Project Manager. dot com