Project management techniques like PERT and CPM are used to plan, schedule, and control projects. PERT was developed for the Polaris missile program to minimize time, while CPM was developed by DuPont to optimize cost and time tradeoffs. Both methods use network diagrams to visually display tasks and their relationships. They are used to estimate duration, identify critical paths, and determine slack. PERT additionally accounts for uncertainty in durations using three time estimates.