Project Scheduling

In this article, we consider the problem of planning inspections and other tasks within a software development (SD) project with respect to the objectives quality (no. of defects), project duration, and costs. Based on a discrete-event simulation model of SD processes comprising the phases coding, inspection, test, and rework, we present a simplified formulation of the problem as a multiobjective optimization problem. For solving the problem (i.e. finding an approximation of the efficient set) we develop a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm. Details of the algorithm are discussed as well as results of its application to sample problems.

Project management is one very critical task of development activity. Project management is traditionally defined as the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing activities and resources for successful execution and completion of project goals and objectives. In this respect, project management holds a key position in satisfactory completion of projects. Project management for software holds the same importance in software development. That is the reason that we have a complete knowledge domain we know as software project management (SPM). Software project management aims to achieve all the project goals and objectives while working within the constraints posed by project environment and stakeholders. These constraints include (but not limited to) time, scope, resources, resource allocation and optimization etc. While managing software projects, it is natural to be confronted with various conflicts of different natures. A good project management activity is one which can eff...

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There may be dozens of deviations from a software development project plan. One example is delays in planned schedule. A project manager must decide how to handle them as any delay requires some action on the part of manager. The choices of software project managers are rather limited. First of all, right engineering talent can help. Thus temporarily reassigning senior engineers to a part of project that is suffering can be a viable option. Another option is requirement scrubbing as sometimes requirements are not essential and hence not needed. Therefore, such unnecessary requirements must be cut off. It is quiet possible that both strategies give no appropriate solution. In such circumstances best approach is to admit incorrectness of the original plans and schedule, and revise the schedule on the basis of new knowledge. This paper presents an iterative scheduling technique to help managers in such situations. Clearly, more severe are the consequences of a delay in schedule, the mo...

The Turnaround Preparation article provides a roadmap to the development of a detailed strategic plan for successful and uneventful execution of an outage, shutdown, or turnaround.  This process was proven successful many times over and provides the best resource application for getting the plant or facility back into production in the shortest timeframe and lowest cost.

This paper describes the methodology and results obtained after productivity improvement work conducted on two consecutive building construction jobs.  The first one was used to evaluate production rates and productivity, current construction methods, potentials and lacks of construction equipment, current construction planning methodology, and existing tools to asses productivity.  These are briefly discussed in this paper. The second job was preplanned based on the experience and detailed documentation obtained in the first one. Work was conducted in order to “design” construction methods in detail, develop a detailed production planning based on the construction methods developed, select crew components and select their specific tasks, and design communication and control tools. Although the second job’s schedule and budget were originally calculated using standard methods (i.e. historical production rates), new schedule and budget were calculated based on the preplanning effort. Construction performance was measured against these values.

The transformative technology that would have the maximum impact on the lives of average person arrival of revolutionary automated vehicles (AVs), also known as driverless or self-driving vehicles.

Automated Vehicles possess numerous benefits, the most profound being its significant improvement in safety as compared to human driven vehicles. Isolating the human driver from behind the wheel, these driverless vehicles are expected to eliminate around 93 per cent of collisions, as of the last statistical report, that happen due to human error. The second most prominent impact of automated vehicles is the stimulation of a tendency inclining in favor of  transportation-as-a-service model(Taas).

Purpose: The goal of this article is to provide an extensive literature review of the models and solution procedures proposed by many researchers interested on the Project Scheduling Problem with non-deterministic activities duration.Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents an exhaustive literature review, identifying the existing models where the activities duration were taken as uncertain or random parameters. In order to get published articles since 1996, was employed the Scopus database. The articles were selected on the basis of reviews of abstracts, methodologies, and conclusions. The results were classified according to following characteristics: year of publication, mathematical representation of the activities duration, solution techniques applied, and type of problem solved.Findings: Genetic Algorithms (GA) was pointed out as the main solution technique employed by researchers, and the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) as the most studied type...

The purpose of this paper is to present modern ways to manage time, resources and progress in a large-scale project. Over the last ten years, new project management techniques and tools have appeared such as concurrent engineering, Continuous Acquisition Lifecycle Support (CALS) and Engineering Data Management System (EDMS). The world downturn of the early 90s influenced project management: increasing constraints on time and budget and more external direction on spending that, for example, requires sophisticated sub-contracting practises. However, the evolution of the software and hardware market makes project control tools cheaper and easier to use. All project groups want to have their scope of work considered as complete projects and to control them themselves. This has several consequences on project staff behaviour concerning project control, and has to be taken into account in every planning process designed today. The system described will be at the heart of the planning and ...

Most of the construction projects are exposed to time and cost overruns due to various factors and this is a major problem. As a solution to this, the Earned Value Management (EVM) method is considered. EVM is a powerful and well-known method used in monitoring and controlling the project. EVM gives an early indication that either project is delayed or not and the project is either over budget or under budget at any particular day by tracking it. Thus, it helps to improve the management control system of a construction project, to detect and control the problems in potential risk areas and to suggest the importance and purpose of monitoring the construction work. This paper explains the main parameters of the EVM system involved in the calculation of time and cost for construction projects. In this study, the Primavera P6 software is used to deals with the project monitoring process of a seven-storeyed (G+6) faculty building whose construction is in progress at Istanbul, Turkey. A comparison between the planned progress of construction activities and actual progress is performed and the analysis results are interpreted. This case study justifies the benefits of using EVM for project cash flow analysis and forecasting.

T he project scheduling problem involves the scheduling of project activities subject to precedence and/or resource constraints. Of obvious practical importance, it has been the subject of intensive research since the late fifties. A wide variety of commercialized project management software packages have been put to practical use. Despite all these efforts, numerous reports reveal that many projects escalate in time and budget and that many project scheduling procedures have not yet found their way to practical use. The objective of this paper is to confront project scheduling theory with project scheduling practice. We provide a generic hierarchical project planning and control framework that serves to position the various project planning procedures and discuss important research opportunities, the exploration of which may help to close the theory-practice gap.

En los últimos años han sido recurrentes las demoras y los sobrecostos en los proyectos de construcción, en especial en obras del sector público. Se han identificado problemas de planificación y de control de la ejecución, tanto del tiempo como del costo. Recientemente los constructores están implementando técnicas de planificación y control más avanzadas para tratar de mejorar el desempeño en la ejecución de los proyectos, una de las herramientas que toma fuerza es la Gestión del Valor Ganado (EVM), la cual se ha utilizado con éxito en el sector de la construcción. Sin embargo, este método de control no considera la variabilidad en el desempeño durante la ejecución del proyecto, por lo cual se han realizado investigaciones que han propuesto combinar los gráficos de control estadístico (SPC) con EVM con el fin de medir la variabilidad en el desempeño de la ejecución de los proyectos. En esta ponencia se explican los conceptos involucrados en el manejo combinado de EVM y SPC en el control de proyectos y se presenta la nueva herramienta computacional EVM Control – Chart, desarrollada por los autores, la cual facilita la implementación practica del uso combinado de estos dos métodos de control. EVM Control – Chart es capaz de calcular índices de desempeño de EVM e incorporar los Gráficos de Control para monitoreo de estos índices en forma automatizada. https://sites.google.com/correounivalle.edu.co/evmcontrolchart/home

I n recent decades, the project-scheduling practice known as critical chain project management (CCPM) has been successful in industrial applications, yet remains a subject of disagreement among scholars and is only sporadically taught in business schools. The purpose of this paper is to assess what aspects of CCPM are appro-priate in operations courses, whether dedicated project management classes or broader introductory operations management classes. To answer this, we survey academic literature on traditional project management problems that gave rise to CCPM to understand if these issues are real. We also examine whether the CCPM methodology should, according to scholars, correct these problems, and survey project success stories attributed to CCPM. We conclude that CCPM is an appropriate project management methodology for student consideration on the basis of motivating critical thinking—especially about behavioral issues—rather than on formal scientific proof of its merit. In s...

Project management is one very critical task of development activity. Project management is traditionally defined as the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing activities and resources for successful execution and completion of project goals and objectives. In this respect, project management holds a key position in satisfactory completion of projects. Project management for software holds the same importance in software development. That is the reason that we have a complete knowledge domain we know as software project management (SPM). Software project management aims to achieve all the project goals and objectives while working within the constraints posed by project environment and stakeholders. These constraints include (but not limited to) time, scope, resources, resource allocation and optimization etc. While managing software projects, it is natural to be confronted with various conflicts of different natures. A good project management activity is one which can eff...

This paper surveys single-project, single-objective, deterministic project scheduling problems in which activities can be processed using a finite or infinite (and uncountable) number of modes concerning resources of various categories and types. The survey is based on a unified framework of a project scheduling model including resources, activities, objectives, and schedules. Most important models and solution approaches across the class

A critical success dimension in projects is the ability to complete a project within an estimated duration. In that regard, effective project scheduling techniques in an uncertain environment is of interest in many organizations. In this paper, the authors use an analytic approach to analyze the behavior of time duration distributions of projects in stochastic activity networks, and propose a simple computation scheme for approximating their distribution. The findings offer an understanding of the large gap between PERT and simulation results, and the deviation of projects from their intended schedules. In addition to providing theoretical framework, the proposed approach also recommends a simple practical pragmatic technique that computes the time distribution of project duration. This is a simple and handy tool for the project manager that may replace simulation. As a byproduct, the earliest start time distribution for each activity is also estimated.

Goldratt's Critical Chain (1997) and the resulting project scheduling practices known as Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) have been popular in our business schools but a subject of disagreement among our scholars. We survey the academic literature about the pros and cons of CCPM to examine claims in the book. We then present a sequence of numerical practice problems that are designed to clarify a student's understanding of the reading and highlight complications that Goldratt ignored. We conclude with two counterexamples that demonstrate ideas in the book that are not necessarily true in practice. Throughout the article are a number of open questions about CCPM that we as an academic community have not yet answered.

This paper presents time and cost planning in construction projects using building information modeling (BIM) approach. The BIM technique can be incorporated into the time and cost planning process through several steps. At the beginning, a 3D model of the construction object is developed using an adequate modeling application. After that, the 3D model is imported into suitable BIM construction management software. Thereupon, the project costs are estimated on the basis of quantities of required resources, consumptions, production rates and unit costs. The project activities are then defined and linked to the construction elements of the 3D model as well as updated with allocated resources and costs. The activities with established durations are mutually connected together into a project network plan by taking into account relevant precedence relationships. The project duration is automatically determined from the generated network plan. Finally, the BIM model of the construction object is completed by upgrading the 3D model with defined scheduling and cost data. An application example is presented in the paper to demonstrate the advantages of BIM implementation in architecture, engineering and construction industry.

ABSTRACT Resource management ensures that a project is completed on time and at cost, and that its quality is as previously defined; nevertheless, resources are scarce and their use in the activities of the project leads to conflicts in the schedule. Resource leveling problems consider how to make the resource consumption as efficient as possible. This paper presents an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm for the Resource Leveling Problem, and its novelty lies in using the Weibull distribution to establish an estimation of the global optimum as a termination condition. The extension of the project deadline with a penalty is allowed, avoiding the increase in the project criticality. The algorithm is tested with the Project Scheduling Problem Library PSPLIB. The proposed algorithm is implemented using VBA for Excel 2010 to provide a flexible and powerful decision support system that enables practitioners to choose between different feasible solutions to a problem in realistic environments.