Project management for arbitrary random durations and cost attributes by applying network approaches

This paper concentrates on the quality management of a project by applying network approaches and statistics methods. A large-scale project can be modeled as a project network. This paper tries to schedule the duration of the project by applying the approaches in network analysis in case the activity duration and the corresponding cost are both arbitrary random variables with a probability distribution. Subject to the project time (the deadline to complete the project) constraint and the budget constraint, this paper studies how to schedule all activity durations of the project. Two algorithms are proposed to generate all upper and lower duration vectors for the project. All feasible activity durations are among such upper and lower duration vectors. Whenever any constraint is changed during the project period, we can re-schedule the activity durations efficiently by applying the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, we can evaluate the probability that the project will be executed successfully, subject to the time and budget constraints. Such a probability is an index for measuring the quality and feasibility of the project. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.