Improve Your Project Management With These Useful Techniques

When managing a large project, it may be difficult to coordinate everyone’s tasks and deadlines in a way that is easy to make and easy to understand. One tool that is a useful technique for this problem is called a PERT chart. This article will explain what a PERT chart is and how it can help organize your project.

What Is a PERT Chart?

PERT stands for Program/Project Evaluation and Review Technique. It is used to visually show your project as a linear timeline and broken down into tasks. PERT Charts are great for organizing projects and giving you a comprehensive view of what the project looks like so it can be better optimized.

With a PERT Chart, you can see what tasks can be shortened or eliminated, and you can also see what tasks are most crucial to your project. With each significant task, you can assign a timeline, a personnel team, and a budget. This will give you a good idea of how long a project will take and the costs.

There are a few downsides to using a PERT Chart. Firstly, if you are doing large projects with connected tasks, it can be challenging to estimate the time it will take to finish those tasks. Also, a system that focuses only on deadlines could lead to quality oversights in the name of getting the job done on time.

How to Use a PERT Chart

The PERT chart is drawn on a horizontal timeline, with the left-most tasks being first and the right-most tasks being at the very end of the project. The tasks themselves are outlined in either boxes or circles called “nodes.”

Each node will contain the following information:

Task name
Start Date
End Date
Time to complete
Who it is assigned to

If needed, you can also add more information to the nodes, such as color-coding the nodes to indicate which team is responsible for that node. For example, the design department is in pink, and the programming department is in blue.

Lastly, the nodes are connected with a series of lines or arrows. The lines indicate what tasks need to be done in what order and what tasks are needed before a new one can begin.