Tools and Techniques

During a project it can be a stressful time and overthinking can occur causing delays, by using project management tools and techniques it can focus and clarify our thinking so the project can continue in an effective and well-organized manner while reducing any possible confusions and errors. These tools can layout and identify everything that needs to be done, who will do what tasks and what is the time frame to reach the goal of completion. The tools and techniques used to render decisions based on the requirements of this project will be a PERT chart.

The PERT chart, also known, as the Program Evaluation Review Technique is a planning and control used for defining and controlling the tasks necessary to complete a project ("Project Management: Tools & Techniques", 2002). PERT planning involves six steps:

1. Identifying the milestones and specific activities – the tasks of the projects are the activities, and the milestones are any events that mark a beginning and end of an activity.

2. Establishing the correct order of activities – this step can either be combined with #1 since the order of some of the activities are obvious but some tasks can require an analysis to determine its exact order to be performed.

3. Construct network Diagram - Using the activity sequence information, a network diagram can be drawn showing the sequence of the successive and parallel activities ("Project Management: Tools & Techniques", 2002). When drawing the diagram, bubbles represent milestones and arrowed lines represent activities.

4. Time required for each activity is estimated – A PERT chart usually includes three time estimates; optimistic time, most likely time, and pessimistic time.

5. Critical path is determined – this is “determined by adding the times for the activities in each sequence and determining the longest path in the project” ("Project Management: Tools & Techniques",