The Common method for writing a program with PVM is as follows:

A user writes one or more sequential programs in C, C++, or Fortran 77 having embedded PVM function (or subroutine) calls. Every program corresponds to a task making up the application. These programs are compiled for every architecture in the host pool, and the resulting object files are put at a location accessible from machines in the host pool. To implement an application, a user typically starts one copy of one task (generally the "master" or "initiating" task) by hand from a machine within the host pool. This process subsequently begins other PVM tasks, finally resulting in a collection of active tasks that then compute locally and replace messages with each other to solve the difficulty.