An Activity Duration Estimation Method Aiming at Enhancing Schedule Stability in Project Management

Abstract

In real project management it is crucial to determine the duration of each activity in view of possible delays due to uncertainty during the project execution. This paper deals with how to determine activity durations of a given project and proposes a new method to estimate activity durations from the viewpoint of schedule stability. In this method, a so called minimum perturbation strategy is employed in order to enhance the stability of the existing project schedule. Through some computational simulations, the proposed method is compared with the conventional estimation methods, such as three point estimation in PERT and the 50% rule in critical chain and buffer management (CC/BM). The numerical results derive some significant properties of the proposed method and demonstrate its effectiveness.