PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was developed forby the [[United States Navy Special Projects Office|U.S.]], Navy[[Lockheed SpecialAircraft]], Projectsand Office[[Booz Allen Hamilton]] to support the U.S. Navy's [[Polaris nuclear submarinemissile]] project.<ref name="MRCW 1959">Malcolm, Donald G.; Roseboom, John H.; Clark, Charles E.; [[Willard Fazar|Fazar, Willard]]; "Application of a Technique for Research and Development Program Evaluation", ''Operations Research'', vol. 7, no. 5, September–October 1959, pp. 646–669</ref><ref name="byte198205">{{Cite magazine |last=Zimmerman |first=Steve |last2=Conrad |first2=Leo M. |date=May 1982 |title=Programming PERT in BASIC |url=https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1982-05_OCR/page/n466/mode/1up?view=theater |access-date=2024-12-29 |magazine=BYTE |pages=465-478}}</ref> It found applications throughout industry. An early example is the [[1968 Winter Olympics]] in [[Grenoble]] which used PERT from 1965 until the opening of the 1968 Games.<ref>[http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1968/or1968.pdf 1968 Winter Olympics official report], p. 49. Accessed 1 November 2010. {{in lang|en|fr}}</ref> This project model was the first of its kind, a revival for the [[scientific management]] of Frederick Taylor and later refined by Henry Ford ([[Fordism]]). [[DuPont]]'s CPM was invented at roughly the same time as PERT.
