Material status index in support of EVM

2007

Functional analysis is an important aspect of the systems engineering process that provides the functional description of a system. Traditional functional analysis tools such as functional flow block diagrams (FFBD) progressively decompose functions into subfunctions based on considerations such as the operations sequence and customer requirements. However, as highlighted in the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook (2004), the FFBD does not provide full information relating to functional boxes and its interfaces, which are essential for the development of projects. The survey done by Pinto and Slevin (1990) suggested that one for the main reasons for projects failures is the lack of communication between the stakeholders. This study presents an Enhanced Functional Analysis Systems Technique (EFAST) tool to facilitate communication amongst various stakeholders such as the customers, program managers, systems architects, and systems engineers. The EFAST maps the customer requirements to downstream system functions and subsystem/component requirements, and outlines the interactions between various system and subsystem level and activities using a top-down approach. A bottom-up approach is used to populate the system element cost and time estimates. The EFAST tool compares the budgeted development resources with the estimated development resources to provide a realistic picture for realizing project in terms of performance, cost, and schedule. The EFAST tool could potentially be used in the project bidding process because it compares the budgeted project cost with the estimated project cost. The application of the EFAST tool is demonstrated using a case example. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Allada, for giving me the opportunity to work with him, for his guidance, help, and constant encouragement, during the progressed of the research. I am especially thankful to Dr. Dagli for awarding me the graduate research funds to conduct this research and for his valuable thoughts to improve this research. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Sedigh for being a part of my committee and her suggestions to keep this research interesting. Their supervision and support was very much appreciated. I would also like thank the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering staff, particularly Wendy Berkelman for her assistance on coursework guidelines that contributes to this research. Also, many thanks to Mohit Goswami, who has help me tremendously in constructing the case study for this research, my roommate, Nandini, who has spent hours daily to prepare meals for us while I am finishing this research, and to all other SDL colleagues, Pradeep Tipaji, Abhijit Choudhury, Padma Parkala, and Harish Bagaitkar for their good humor and companionship as this research progressed. Finally, I wish to thank my parents, especially my mum, who has given me her unconditional love, my brother and my sister who have provided me their great support. They have been very influential in all my efforts and accomplishments. vi

This paper reviews the problems, approaches and analytical models on project control systems and discusses the possible research extensions. We focused on literature in Earned Value Analysis (EVA), optimization tools, and the design of decision support systems (DSS) that will contribute to helping project managers in planning and controlling under uncertain project environments. The review reveals that further research is essential to develop analytical models using EVA metrics to forecast project performance. It also suggests that DSS should be model driven, function as early warning systems and should be integrated to commercial project management software

2020

Engineering projects are becoming increasingly complex as projects get larger and as technology improves. Greater competition worldwide has meant that projects are delivered quicker and cheaper. This necessitates sophisticated Project Management Information System (PMIS) technologies to be adopted to improve efficiency and quality on projects. PMIS data and reports can be used to better understand the risk exposure, resource utilisation, profitability, and scheduling of a project. It also informs strategic project decisions and performance monitoring and reporting. Unfortunately, project data is often fragmented and embedded in different systems. This paper investigates several commercially available PMIS, to understand and compare the functionality of these systems. A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted with purposively selected project systems experts at twelve project-based organisations. Thematic analysis revealed what functions PMIS fulfils, how the...

International Journal of Project Management, 2011

This study is focused on decision support in the context of product and service development projects. Decision support requires the capacity to characterize the current state of the project (performance evaluation) and the decision-maker's point of view. However, the different projects' stakeholders do not have the same needs in terms of performance evaluation to support their decision-making processes. Furthermore, in some cases controlling project performance using the elementary components of the Iron Triangle (Cost, Time and Quality) alone seems inefficient. This paper proposes a new multi-dimensional Project Performance Measurement System that would enable managers to deal with the volume of data. The proposition integrates the only character of each project (tasks, objectives, decision-makers personality and competences), several good practices in terms of universal project management dimensions on the one hand, and in terms of performance analysis on the other hand. Then, we show how an aggregation tool called MACBETH is used to analyze the performance measures according to project managers' own performance interests. A case study illustrates the proposed system.

2014 International Conference on Electronics and Communication Systems (ICECS), 2014

Project Management process plays a critical role in managing factors such as cost, time, technology and personnel towards achieving the success of a project and henceforth the sustainability of the company in the industrial market. This paper emphasizes empirical study of several projects developed over a period of time in a product and service based CMMI Level 5 Software Company. The investigation shows impact analysis of resources such as cost, time, and number of developers towards the successful completion of the project as allocated by the project manager during the developmental process. The analysis has further led to the introduction of a new qualitative metric, Success Level Index Metric (SLI) whose index value varies from 0 to 1. SLI acts as a maturity indicator that indicates the degree of maturity of the company in terms of success of their projects based on which the company can choose their desired level of success for their projects.

IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2018

The problem encountered in project owner's financial accounting report is the difference in total project costs of MS Project to the Indonesian Standard (Standard Indonesia Standard / Cost Estimating Standard Book of Indonesia). It is one of the MS Project problems concerning to its cost accuracy, so cost data cannot be used in an integrated way for all project components. This study focuses on finding the causes of inaccuracy of the MS Projects. The aim of this study, which is operationally, are: (i) identifying cost analysis procedures for both current methods (SNI) and MS Project; (ii) identifying cost bias in each element of the cost analysis procedure; and (iii) analysing the cost differences (cost bias) in each element to identify what the cause of inaccuracies in MS Project toward SNI is. The method in this study is comparing for both the system analysis of MS Project and SNI. The results are: (i) MS Project system in Work of Resources element has limitation for two decimal digits only, have led to its inaccuracy. Where the Work of Resources (referred to as effort) in MS Project represents multiplication between the Quantities of Activities and Requirements of resources in SNI; (ii) MS Project and SNI have differences in the costing methods (the cost estimation methods), in which the SNI uses the Quantity-Based Costing (QBC), meanwhile MS Project uses the Time-Based Costing (TBC). Based on this research, we recommend to the contractors who use SNI should make an adjustment for Work of Resources in MS Project (with correction index) so that it can be used in an integrated way to the project owner's financial accounting system. Further research will conduct for improvement the MS Project as an integrated tool toward all part of the project participant.

Jordan Journal of Civil Engineering, 2016

Every project confronts risk both in financial and technical dimensions. This induces a greater response on the performance of the project. A successful construction project depends on how the project participants compute the actual project performance. A commendable assessment of project performance practice determines the project productivity both quantitatively and qualitatively. Methods of project performance measurement vary among industries. As a contribution to the above, this study equips the project manager with a proficient mode of project performance measurement and the essential promising decisions that head to profit maximization. This intricate study thus facilitates the project manager to compute the project performance on the basis of the effects of Earned Value Management (EVM) indices which are broadly classified as: variance indices, performance indices and miscellaneous or forecast indices. Adopting the Analytical Network Process (ANP) structure model in Super Decision software is a reliable decision making tool. This study indicates that the cost variance (CV) index is prominent among the EVM indices that highly affect the project characteristics, the measurement of which facilitates the required control measures on respective project activities. It also indicates that cost is the major project characteristic, the variation of which immensely affects the project performance. It procures an objective reference for engineering projects by following the selection process of best EVM indices that holds an accurate measure of project performance.

Journal of Construction Engineering, 2016

Construction projects are risky in both physical implementation and management. The characteristics of the risk reinforce the necessity of efficient management to increase the chances of success without commitment to its goals. This study explores the correlation of delay and the schedule performance index (SPI) to evaluate the risk of a construction project completed with time overruns. The hypothesis that the SPI of projects with a delay is distinct from those projects without a delay is assumed. A database with 19 elements was used to test this hypothesis and to calculate limit values to the SPI. Therefore, the risk of delay will be small when the observed SPI is greater than the superior limit and large when the SPI is below the inferior limit. The simplicity involved in the calculation of these values showed an advantage in comparison with other methods of risk evaluation. Another strong point observed is that any company can determine the value of risk by considering its own history and support decisions like doing corrective actions.

2016

From time to time in the Earned Value Management literature a claim is made that exceeding the To Complete Performance Index (TCPI) value of 1.10 spells doom for the project. That is, when the threshold value of 1.10 is exceeded, the project is out of control and the project manager has little chance of successfully recovering to the desired project cost. An article from a few years ago examined the threshold theoretically, concluding that it appears to have validity. As well, the same article extended its assessment to the comparable Earned Schedule indicator, the To Complete Schedule Performance Index (TSPI). This paper examines the threshold value empirically for both TCPI and TSPI, using real data from 25 projects of differing type and varying sources.

Proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference 2023

Tracking and monitoring become particularly important during the implementation phase of projects; however, participants should maintain some form of tracking and monitoring at all stages. It has taken decades for the use of milestones to be accompanied by sophisticated methods, even those required by law. Earned Value Management (EVM) is a managerial method used to control projects in terms of cost, time, and progress. Although many researchers have studied the EVM concept, only a few have attempted to suggest EVM frameworks for concurrent analysis of additional elements beyond time, cost, and progress. The importance of EVM is indicated by the fact that it is now a permanent chapter in methodologies and standards. In the meantime, several studies have shown EVM's shortcomings, and a number of researchers have proposed possible solutions (e.g., Earned Schedule or Earned Duration). This conference paper will summarize the most critical and recent additions, and based on them, further extension possibilities can be suggested.