The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a statistical tool used in project management to analyze the tasks involved in completing a project. It involves defining tasks, organizing them into a network diagram, and estimating activity times and dependencies. This allows project managers to compute the minimum time needed to complete the project by identifying the critical path. PERT was developed for the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and facilitates decision making by making the dependencies and critical path of a project visible.