Title: Deterministic, path-sensitive heuristics for project earned value management

Authors: James Burns, Qing Cao

Addresses: Rawls College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2101, USA. ' Rawls College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2101, USA

Abstract: New deterministic, path-sensitive approaches to tracking and control are presented that will provide assessments of on-time as well as within-budget completion, taking into consideration the critical path. Project management and control with earned value analysis (EVA) is first investigated for validity. EVA is well-accepted as a technique for performance measurement of projects during execution. Even so, limitations are found and catalogued for projects of all sizes. From those limitations, improvements are proposed, such improvements taking the form of simple heuristics involving paths. The improvements are tested and found to have validity.

Keywords: earned value management; EVM; earned value analysis; EVA; critical paths; budget at completion; BAC; time at completion; TAC; critical chain project management; CCPM; path-sensitive heuristics; deterministic heuristics; project tracking; project control; performance measurement; project organisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPOM.2011.038861

International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 2011 Vol.3 No.1, pp.1 - 21

Received: 12 Oct 2009
Accepted: 25 Dec 2009
Published online: 14 Jan 2015 *

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