A critical-path focus for earned duration increases its sensitivity for project-duration monitoring and forecasting in deterministic, fuzzy and stochastic network analysis

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Wood, David A.

Affiliations: DWA Energy Limited 25 Badgers Oak, Lincoln, LN5 9JP, UK | Tel.: +44 1522 789095; E-mail: dw@dwasolutions.com

Abstract: Earned duration metrics improve project-duration-performance monitoring and forecasting compared to earned schedule metrics because they depend only on time-based variables. In projects with multiple-parallel paths of work items and with work items varying significantly in individual durations, earned duration metrics sometimes fail to provide reliable project-duration monitoring and forecasts. Calculating earned duration using information for the critical-path work items only, provides a way of overcoming distortions in earned duration caused by non-critical-path work items. Weighting the work items used in an earned duration calculation, according to their individual-planned durations, places more emphasis on the longer-duration work items, which often constitute the more-crucial work items in terms of uncertainty and performance. Two new earned duration formulations are derived and evaluated. The analysis is performed using deterministic, stochastic and fuzzy models related to work breakdown progress diagrams that illustrate the quality and reliability of the information that can be derived from these new formulations.

Keywords: Earned duration, stochastic project analysis, fuzzy EVM, critical-path analysis, duration performance index DPI, quantified project risk analysis

DOI: 10.3233/JCM-180795

Journal: Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 359-386, 2018