Estimate time and projects with PERT

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a project management tool that applies statistical methods to analyze and visualize the tasks required to complete a project. By incorporating three time estimates—optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic – it provides a more accurate forecast of task durations, enabling more effective planning and scheduling.

There is a longer and much more complex definition of PERT, check Wikipedia. Here is a very simple and pragmatic description of it and how I use it.

If there is a task with unknown time.

• T time to complete
• P the most pessimistic time;
• N nominal time the most realistic time;
• P the most optimistic time;

Of course, this is a not silver bullet, but might be very useful in the most of cases.