Optimizing the project's duration is necessary for efficient project management in order to reduce the

project's overall time and cost. By breaking down large, complex projects into smaller, more
manageable tasks, allocating resources, and controlling the project's circles, project managers always
use the Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) to reduce the
project's overall cost and duration. PERT and CPM are hence operational research tools that are used to
increase project effectiveness and efficiency. These methodologies can be employed in a variety of fields
or sectors, including construction, aviation, the military, education, and civil administration.

The methods are essentially network-oriented techniques using the same principle. PERT and CPM are
basically time-oriented methods in the sense that they both lead to determination of a time schedule for
the project. The significant difference between two approaches is that the time estimates for the
different activities in CPM were assumed to be deterministic while in PERT these are described
probabilistically. These techniques are referred as project scheduling techniques.

Applications of CPM / PERT

These methods have been applied to a wide variety of problems in industries and have found
acceptance even in government organizations. These include

 Construction of a dam or a canal system in a region

 Construction of a building or highway
 Maintenance or overhaul of airplanes or oil refinery
 Space flight  Cost control of a project using PERT / COST
 Designing a prototype of a machine
 Development of supersonic planes

PERT
The Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a method for representing project activities in
the right order and at the right time. It is a method of organizing, scheduling, and integrating work inside
a project. PERT is essentially a management planning and control system that offers a project's
blueprint. The PERT has successfully identified all of a project's key components or events.

This method involves creating a PERT Chart that serves as a timetable for all the project's stated tasks.
The reporting levels of the tasks or events in the PERT Charts are largely the same as those specified in
the WBS (WBS).

In PERT activities are shown as a network of precedence relationships using activity-onarrow network
construction

– Multiple time estimates

– Probabilistic activity times

USED IN: Project management - for non-repetitive jobs (research and development work), where the
time and cost estimates tend to be quite uncertain. This technique uses probabilistic time estimates.

Characteristics of PERT:
The main characteristics of PERT are as following:
1. It serves as a base for obtaining the important facts for implementing
the decision-making.
2. It forms the basis for all the planning activities.
3. PERT helps management in deciding the best possible resource
utilization method.
4. PERT take advantage by using time network analysis technique.
5. PERT presents the structure for reporting information.
6. It helps the management in identifying the essential elements for the
completion of the project within time.
Advantages of PERT:
It has the following advantages:
1. Estimation of completion time of project is given by the PERT.
2. It supports the identification of the activities with slack time.
3. The start and dates of the activities of a specific project is determined.
4. It helps project manager in identifying the critical path activities.
5. PERT makes well organized diagram for the representation of large
amount of data.

Disadvantages of PERT:
It has the following disadvantages:
1. The complexity of PERT is more which leads to the problem in
implementation.
2. The estimation of activity time is subjective in PERT which is a major
disadvantage.
3. Maintenance of PERT is also expensive and complex.
4. The actual distribution of may be different from the PERT beta
distribution which causes wrong assumptions.
5. It under estimates the expected project completion time as there is
chances that other paths can become the critical path if their related
activities are deferred.

PERT Planning comprises of the following steps:

1. Identification of definite activities and breakthroughs:
It is convenient to list all the tasks and breakthroughs required to
complete the project in the table. The breakthroughs represent the
starting point and deadline of one or more activities. With the help of
 identification of activities, tasks at later stage can be expanded to build
information on sequence and duration.

2. Determining the proper sequence of the activities:

This step in PERT planning process is used to regulate the sequence
of activities. Activities can be serial or parallel, the sequence
represents the dependency of one activity on other activity. As in the
first step the identification of the activities is done, it is necessary to
identify the relationships between activities in this step. The analysis of
exact order in which the activities performed are required for other
tasks.

3. Construction of network diagram:

A network diagram is drawn with the help of the activity identification
and activity sequence information. In the network diagram, the
activities are illustrated by arrowed lines and breakthroughs are
illustrated by circles. To convert the tabular activity information into a
network diagram, various CASE tools like MS-PROJECT are available
which simplify the process of conversion easily.

4. Estimation of the time required for each activity:

All activities in the project are illustrated by the persistent or steady
unit of time. PERT has the capacity to deal with ambiguity and
unpredictability in the completion time of the activities. The commonly
used unit in software engineering for the activity completion time is
weeks.

5. Determination of Critical Path:

Critical path is the path which takes the maximum amount of time.
There are many paths in the network diagram which demonstrates the
start and end events of the project. Critical path is determined by
adding the time taken by the activities in each sequence and then
determining the longest path in the project. Total calendar time needed
for the project is given by the critical path.

6. Updating of PERT chart:

PERT charts are modified as the project work progresses. As the
project work continues, many changes to the PERT chart are made
such as addition of resources and changes in the estimation time by
the actual time.
 7.
CPM
Critical Path Method (CPM) is a network analysis approach. It finds out which sequence of activities has
the least measure of scheduling resilience by which it predicts the duration of the project. It is based on
the estimation of the standard time needed for execution of an activity. CPM manages both time and
cost of the project.

The Project Management Body of Knowledge's (PMBOK) definition of the Critical Path Method is as
follows:

“The Critical Path Method is the order of planned activities that establishes the project's duration.”

 If the project is to be deemed successful, these predetermined tasks must be completed.

 Also, they have to be finished in a particular order. While constructing a house, you must dig the
foundation before building the walls; the two must be done in order.
 The CPM describes the project's longest work sequence, which is crucial to comprehend. That is,
there will be various work sequences in every project. The sequence that requires the most time
would be described by the CPM.

For instance, if building a house, would have the following work sequences:

Each task takes a different amount of time and resources. It takes more time to build walls and
lay the roof than to install faucets and fixtures.

If to figure out the project’s ‘Critical Path’, look at the sequence that takes the most amount of
time, like this:
The total time taken to complete the sequence along this critical path gives an idea of the
project’s minimum duration. Undertake several task sequences simultaneously, but if there are
any delays in the critical path sequence, the project will suffer delays as well.

The Critical Path Algorithm Explained

At its heart, the Critical Path Method is essentially an algorithm for decision-making. This
algorithm takes a task's start time, its duration, and finish time to figure out which activities
deserve the most attention (i.e. are "critical" for the project).

Let's consider an example to understand the critical path algorithm better.

Suppose you have a list of tasks as shown below. Columns C and D list the tasks that must be
accomplished for the activity to begin, and the duration of the activity, respectively.

Since the project manager's goal is to complete the project as quickly as possible (without
compromising on quality, of course), we'll try to find the earliest finish time for each activity.
To do this, organize all tasks into a flowchart and note their durations next to the task ID. The
arrows indicate the sequence of activities. We'll mark the Earliest Start (ES) time to the left of
the activity, and the Earliest Finish (EF) time to the right.:

Mark the Start Time (S) to the left and right of the first activity. Usually, this would be 0.

Now mark the Earliest Start (ES) time of each activity. This is given by the largest number to the
right of the activity's immediate predecessor (i.e., its Earliest Finish time, or EF).

If the activity has two predecessors, the one with the later EF time would give you the ES of the
activity.

The EF of an activity is given by its Earliest Start time (ES) and its duration (t), i.e. ES + t.

Thus, if an activity's ES is 20 and will last for 10 days, its EF will be 30.

Mark all these figures in the flowchart.

The longest path will be the “critical path”.

The final figure to the right of the last task in the sequence will give you the minimum time the
project will take to finish.

In this method, the critical path of the project is established by identifying the critical activities of the
project. Critical activities are the activities whose total float value is ‘0’.

In CPM activities are shown as a network of precedence relationships using activity-on node network
construction

– Single estimate of activity time

– Deterministic activity times

PERT is a probability time estimate for activities in a project. However, CPM

does not involve probability but actual time estimate of activities in a project.

The time estimate is determined by the estimator, who is expected to be an

experienced individual. The estimator would have had a long record of similar projects
in the past. For each activity, there are four-time estimates:

1) Early start (ES) is the earliest time it takes for an activity to begin. The
assumption is that all preceding activities begin at their earliest possible
start time; otherwise, a late start to the preceding activity will result in a
late start to its succeeding activity. The ES of an activity is the sum of the
time of all preceding activities on that path. When an activity has more
than one preceding activity, the early start of that activity depends on the
early finish of the longest duration or the activity with the longest ES
time, t.
2) A late start (LS) is a delay in the start of an activity. The latest time an
activity can begin without delaying the project completion time.
 3) Early finish (EF) is an early start of an activity that will lead to an early
finish. The assumption is that the activity begins with ES and ends with t.
EF = ES + t. The precedence relationship shows that the early start of
activity depends upon the early finish of its immediately preceding
activity. That is, ES + t = EF (Forward induction/movement).
4) Late finish (LF)—A late start to an activity will lead to a late finish. The
delay in the late start of an activity resulting in the late finish of that
activity should be such as not to delay the project completion time. We
assume that for the last activity in the critical path, EF = LF and then LF −
t = LS indicates a reverse process called Backward induction/movement.
The LS of an activity is determined by the LF of the previous activity (ies).
When an activity has more than one preceding activity, that is, if two or
more paths converge on an activity, the path with the shortest total LS
time is taken as the LF of the preceding activity or activities.

Steps in determining Critical Path

 Specify the individual activities.
 Determine the sequence of the activities.
 Draw the network diagram.
 Estimate the activity completion time.
 Identify the critical path.
 Update the CPM diagram

Advantages of Critical Path Method (CPM):

It has the following advantages:
1. It figures out the activities which can run parallel to each other.
2. It helps the project manager in identifying the most critical elements of
the project.
3. It gives a practical and disciplined base which helps in determining
how to reach the objectives.
4. CPM is effective in new project management.
5. CPM can strengthen a team perception if it is applied properly.
6. CPM provides demonstration of dependencies which helps in the
scheduling of individual activities.
7. It shows the activities and their outcomes as a network diagram.
8. It gives a fair and concise procedure of documenting of project.
9. It helps in determining the slack time.
10. An explicit and clear approach of communicating project plans,
schedules, time and cost performance is developed.
11. It is extensively used in industry.
12. It helps in optimization by determining the project duration.
Disadvantages of Critical Path Method (CPM):
It has the following disadvantages:
1. The scheduling of personnel is not handled by the CPM.
2. In CPM, it is difficult to estimate the completion time of an activity.
3. The critical path is not always clear in CPM.
4. For bigger projects, CPM networks can be complicated too.
5. It also does not handle the scheduling of the resource allocation.
6. In CPM, critical path needs to be calculated precisely.

USED IN: Production management - for the jobs of repetitive in nature where the activity time estimates
can be predicted with considerable certainty due to the existence of past experience.

SL.No. PERT CPM

PERT is that technique of project CPM is that technique of project

management which is used to management which is used to
manage uncertain (i.e., time is not manage only certain (i.e., time is
1. known) activities of any project known) activities of any project

It is activity-oriented technique
It is event-oriented technique which which means that network is
means that network is constructed constructed on the basis of
2. on the basis of event activities

3. It is a probability model It is a deterministic model

It majorly focuses on time as

meeting time target or estimation of It majorly focuses on Time-cost
percent completion is more trade off as minimizing cost is
4. important more important

It is appropriate for high precision It is appropriate for reasonable

5. time estimation time estimation

6. It has non-repetitive nature of job It has repetitive nature of job

There is no chance of crashing as There may be crashing because of

7. there is no certainty of time certain time boundation
SL.No. PERT CPM

It uses dummy activities for

8. It doesn’t use any dummy activities representing sequence of activities

It is suitable for projects which

required research and It is suitable for construction
9. development projects