ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the old Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and demonstrates that PERT does not give the correct answers for projects with parallel paths and merges points because it does not recognize the crucial merge bias. It focuses on three paths that merge at the project finish milestone. This result is suspicious since it seems logical that this three-path project is riskier than the single-path project shown above, and we discovered that the single-path schedule was only 15 percent likely to finish on that date. Project schedule risk analysis can help the project manager identify in advance those risks and paths that look 'safe' in the current plan but which, under some circumstances. The chapter considers schedules with more than one path we become interested in which path, and indeed which activities, are most important in the schedule's risk.