Advanced Models for Project Management

L. Valadares Tavares

• 31 oktober 1998
• 9780792382225

Samenvatting:

This concept has come to represent the two major features underlying the notion of a project: the sequential and the competitive nature of its components, the project's activities.



The field of project management has developed since the late 1950s; however, the increase in computer power 40 years on has greatly accelerated its theoretical and computational developments. This text is an expository treatment of the recent developments in project modelling. These advances and their treatment in the book are as follows: Chapters Two and Three broaden the concept of precedence and the description of activities to produce a wide range of realistic representation of projects. Chapters Four and Five explore the stochastic study of project features through several analytical and numerical models - using simulation and risk analysis - which provide experimental and forecasting analyses. Chapter Six examines the allocation of resources in complex situations and restrictions, and also studies the financial aspects of projects and optimization of financial elements. Chapter Seven assesses and evaluates projects within the framework of multi-criteria decision theory. Chapter Eight concludes with an analysis of new models based on synthetic indicators, helping the operations manager select the most convenient solutions. Hence, the book provides a number of original advances, including: an assessment of the complexity and hardness of a project network; a description of the network's morphology; a new approach to simulate project networks; development of models based on continuous variables to optimize project schedules; and the development of a three-dimension model (MACMODEL) to assess and to evaluate projects and a new synthetic indicator to support the process of scheduling. Finally, several software products are presented that help the project manager to use new tools such as RISKNET and MACMODEL.