The impact of applying effort to reduce activity variability on the project time and cost performance

During project execution, deviations from the baseline schedule are inevitable due to the presence of uncertainty and variability. To assure successful project completion, the project’s progress should be monitored and corrective actions should be taken to get the project back on track. This paper presents an integrated project control procedure for measuring the project’s progress and taking corrective actions when necessary. We apply corrective actions that reduce the activity variability to improve the project outcome. Therefore, we quantify the relation between the applied managerial effort and the reduction in activity variability. Moreover, we define three distinct control strategies to take corrective actions on activities, i.e. an interventive strategy, a preventive strategy and a hybrid strategy. A computational experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of these strategies. The results of this experiment show that different strategies are preferred depending on the topological network structure of projects. More specifically, the interventive strategy and hybrid strategy are preferred for parallel projects, while the preventive strategy is preferred for serial projects

A statistical method for estimating activity uncertainty parameters to improve project forecasting

Just like any physical system, projects have entropy that must be managed by spending energy. The entropy is the project’s tendency to move to a state of disorder (schedule delays, cost overruns), and the energy process is an inherent part of any project management methodology. In order to manage the inherent uncertainty of these projects, accurate estimates (for durations, costs, resources, …) are crucial to make informed decisions. Without these estimates, managers have to fall back to their own intuition and experience, which are undoubtedly crucial for making decisions, but are are often subject to biases and hard to quantify. This paper builds further on two published calibration methods that aim to extract data from real projects and calibrate them to better estimate the parameters for the probability distributions of activity durations. Both methods rely on the lognormal distribution model to estimate uncertainty in activity durations and perform a sequence of statistical hypothesis tests that take the possible presence of two human biases into account. Based on these two existing methods, a new so-called statistical partitioning heuristic is presented that integrates the best elements of the two methods to further improve the accuracy of estimating the distribution of activity duration uncertainty. A computational experiment has been carried out on an empirical database of 83 empirical projects. The experiment shows that the new statistical partitioning method performs at least as good as, and often better than, the two existing calibration methods. The improvement will allow a better quantification of the activity duration uncertainty, which will eventually lead to a better prediction of the project schedule and more realistic expectations about the project outcomes. Consequently, the project manager will be able to better cope with the inherent uncertainty (entropy) of projects with a minimum managerial effort (energy)

Successful Management Strategies for Addressing Information Technology Project Scope Changes

Inadequate scope management strategies fail to prevent project failures. Information technology (IT) project leaders who lack strategies to prevent project failures negatively impact their business goals and delivery schedule. Grounded in the theory of constraints, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies IT project leaders use to manage project scope and prevent project failures. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and a review of company documents from 3 participants in a small IT consulting company. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three themes emerged: understanding project scope changes, performance techniques, and communication. A key recommendation is that IT project leaders should use project performance techniques and communicate with stakeholders when identifying strategies to prevent project failures. Implications for positive social change include creating more local IT job opportunities, improving employee compensation, and investing in local communities

Project Management Strategies for Success—The Case of Zambia

Construction project managers who fail to implement infrastructure projects successfully negatively impact organizational performance and profitability. Grounded in the contingency management conceptual framework, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies Zambian construction project managers use to avoid infrastructure project failure. The participants comprised five construction project managers in Lusaka, Zambia, who reduced infrastructure project failures. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of organization project documents. The Marshal and Rossman seven-step process was used to analyze the data. The following themes emerged: effective project planning, execution, and closure; effective communication; and effective collaboration and coordination. A key recommendation for construction project managers is to develop communication plans based on the project context and environment. The implications for positive social change include the potential to positively impact economic growth, employment creation, and poverty reduction