Forecasting Techniques, Research Paper Example

Introduction

PERT is a project management technique that was developed in the 1950s by the American navy. They designed it so as to be able to manage the Polaris project. Since then program evaluation and review technique (PERT) has gained popularity in all spheres of project management. It is widely used by project managers in their endeavors to accomplish tasks. This is mainly because it is easy to use, reliable and has the potential of considerably reducing project completion time (Lewis, 2002).

Advantages of inflating a project based on PERT

In the words of Meredith and Mantel (2006) one of the greatest advantages of inflating a project using PERT is the fact that a project manager is sure of completing a given project. This is because PERT has the potential of reducing resources required to complete a project. For instance if a project was to take 18 months to complete and by using PERT a project manager takes 16 months, this is a great gain both to the manager and to the principal. Secondly inflating a project using PERT has the advantage of being at a position to show the critical path activities that directly impact on project completion time. This is very vital because it is only by identifying the critical path activities that the project manager can know which activities are dependent of one another. He then can decide on the best scheduling techniques to use.

Another advantage of using PERT estimation technique in a project is the ability it has to identify activities that have slack time and hence can lend some time to the critical path activities. This is equally vital because it has the ability to reduce project completion time and resources. This is very important as far as project management is concerned. Finally using PERT to estimate project completion time has the advantage of establishing the start and end dates of the various activities involved in the project. This makes it easier and possible for the project manager to run the entire process.

Disadvantages of inflating a project based on PERT

Just like all other project management techniques, PERT has its own fair share of disadvantages. The first being the fact that activity time estimates are subjective and depend on a number of things that may not be shown. They depend too much on human judgement which may be prone to biasness. Hence this increases the error margin while using this technique. On the same note using PERT to inflate a project has the weakness of giving inaccurate estimates if you are not well skilled to use it. You need quite skilled workforce to be at a position to use this technique, otherwise you will be disappointed. This greatly limits the usage of PERT especially in less complicated projects (Meredith and Mantel, 2006).

Thirdly PERT has the disadvantage of assuming a beta distribution of time estimates yet the actual estimates may differ. This means that the actual project completion time may greatly differ from what had been projected initially. In fact it is a few if not nil activities in a project that achieve or meet the estimated beta.

Other techniques

Whereas PERT is one of the major project management cost and scheduling estimation techniques, there are others. This includes CPM, project scheduling, Gantt charts and economic graphs. Gantt charts and economic graphs are used in simple projects that have certainty and specific activities whereas the remaining two can be used the same way as PERT. Among all these techniques I prefer to use PERT. This is because it is easy to use, requires less expertise and can manage all the important aspects of a project like activity time, completion time and critical path. Finally, yet importantly PERT has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that it has the ability to considerably reduce project costs if well applied (Kelley, Walker & Morgan, 2005).

Conclusion

Whereas using PERT to estimate the project completion times has its own share of disadvantages, the advantages out weigh them. Thus, I could highly recommend that all of us learn all the prerequisites skills required in using this model.

Reference

Lewis, James (2002). Fundamentals of Project Management (2nd edition). American Management Association.

Kelley, James; Walker, Morgan (2005). Critical-Path Planning and Scheduling. Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer Conference.

Meredith, J.R. and S.J. Mantel (2006). Project Management: A Managerial Approach (6^th Edition). John Wiley publishers.

Dennis Lock (2007) Project Management (9^th edition) Gower Publishing, Ltd., New Delhi.