Nasr, E B (2005) An integrated project planning and control system approach for measuring project performance. PhD thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
Abstract
Existing Project Management Systems (PMS) that uses commonly standard scheduling and project control techniques have been proven to be valuable in assisting today's project teams with some of their management core functions. However, many researchers, formal and informal studies, surveys of practitioners and industry experts identified several PMS limitations which viewed as deficiencies rather than faults. These limitations causes many to still continue to rely on their intuition in addition to relevant project information provided by existing PMS to form judgments, which result in having project performance evaluation and analysis to still be considered as mostly done in an ad-hoc manner. Our hypotheses, is that existing PMS capabilities could be improved by building on their exiting functionalities to make them more effective. Therefore, provide a consistent integrated systematic approach for project performance measurement and meet end users practical needs. This research introduces an Integrated Project Planning and Control System (IPP&CS) to provide the needed recommended improvements and/or modifications addressed by other researchers and industry experts' to better assist the project team in managing their project Schedule, Cost, and Integrated Cost/Schedule throughout their project life cycle, specifically in the areas of project performance analysis trends analysis and explanations. Our research methodology included: Investigating existing PMS (current usage, trends and limitation); Conducting formal and informal interviews with selected experts who acted in an advisory role to validate research needs and requirements; Building an integrated systems to overcome existing PMS limitations; Informal and formal validation and verification to demonstrate and evaluate IPP&CS capabilities; Development of a test case study to simulate implementation scenario (testing different potential end users with different level of experience) to measure their performance with and without the system and see if our IPP&CS produce the results intended by answering the research hypothesis. The results were quite positive and overall improvement over existing PMS was recognized as significant especially for end users with less experience. The research addresses advantages and limitations of IPP&CS as well as recommendations for future research.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Diekmann, J E |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | control system; measurement; project team; integrated system; life cycle; performance evaluation; project control; project planning; scheduling; project performance; case study; interview; validation |
| Index terms: | testing, end user, project team, intuition, life cycle, scheduling, project performance, implementation, project planning, performance evaluation, test case, judgment, control system, research methodology, project management, case study, survey, practitioner, interview, project control, validation, functionality, integrated system |
| Subjects: | operations research, stakeholder, professional practice, design features, value management, monitoring and control, practitioner, performance measurement, project delivery, dispute resolution, control systems, design methods, cognitive psychology, professional development, data collection methods, project management theory and practice, contractual arrangements, research design and methodology |
| Topics: | Time Control, Information Management, Business Strategy, Roles and Professions, Design Practice, Project Management, Quality Management, Legal Issues, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Procurement |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here