Neely, L E (2017) Project scheduling disputes: Expert characterization and estimate aggregation. PhD thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
Abstract
Project schedule estimation continues to be a tricky endeavor. Stakeholders bring a wealth of experience to each project, but also biases which could affect their final estimates. This research proposes to study differences among stakeholders and develop a method to aggregate multiple estimates into a single estimate a project manager can defend. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the problem. Chapter 2 summarizes the literature on historical scheduling issues, scheduling best practices, decision analysis, and expert aggregation. Chapter 3 describes data collection/processing, while Chapter 4 provides the results. Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the results, and Chapter 6 provides a summary and recommendation for future work. The research consists of two major parts. The first part categorizes project stakeholders by three major demographics: “position”, “years of experience”, and “level of formal education”. Subjects were asked to answer several questions on risk aversion, project constraints, and general opinions on scheduling struggles. Using Design of Experiments (DOE), responses were compared to the different demographics to determine whether or not certain attitudes concentrated themselves within certain demographics. Subjects were then asked to provide activity duration and confidence estimates across several projects, as well as opinions on the activity list itself. DOE and Bernoulli trials were used to determine whether or not subjects within different demographics estimated differently from one another. Correlation coefficients among various responses were then calculated to determine if certain attitudes affected activity duration estimates. The second part of this research dealt primarily with aggregation of opinions on activity durations. The current methodology uses the Program Evaluation and Review (PERT) technique of calculating the expected value and variance of an activity duration based on three inputs and assuming the unknown duration follows a Beta distribution. This research proposes a methodology using Morris’ Bayesian belief-updating methods and unbounded distributions to aggregate multiple expert opinions. Using the same three baseline estimates, this methodology combines multiple opinions into one expected value and variance which can then be used in a network schedule. This aggregated value represents the combined knowledge of the project stakeholders which helps mitigate biases engrained in a single expert’s opinion.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Baecher, G |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | disputes; scheduling; project manager; decision analysis; duration; best practice; project stakeholder; stakeholder; experiment |
| Index terms: | bias, methodology, program, project stakeholder, expected value, scheduling, project scheduling, project constraint, design of experiment, experiment, best practice, estimate, duration, demographics, variance, project manager, decision analysis, aggregate, dispute, estimation |
| Subjects: | probability and distributions, software systems, statistical analysis, project controls, decision analysis, measurement and scaling, sociology, control systems, dispute resolution, profession, data collection methods, business, financial and cost management, modelling and simulation, research methods, demography, materials science, operations research |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Legal Issues, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Research Practice, Time Control, Digital Applications, Urban Studies |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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