ABSTRACT
Managers of product development (PD) project portfolios face difficult decisions in allocating limited resources to minimize project or portfolio delay. Although PD projects are highly ...iterative (cyclical), almost all of the vast literature on project scheduling assumes that projects are acyclical. This article addresses this gap with a comprehensive analysis of 31 priority rules (PRs) on 18,480 portfolios containing 55,440 iterative projects. We find that the best PRs for iterative project portfolios differ significantly from those for acyclical ones, and that the best PRs at the project level differ from those at the portfolio level. The best PR depends on project and portfolio characteristics such as network density, iteration intensity, resource loading profile, and amount of resource contention. In particular, by amplifying the effects of iteration, high‐density networks hold dramatically different implications for iterative projects. Moreover, the best PR also differs depending on whether the objective is to minimize the average delay to all projects or to minimize delay to the overall portfolio. Thus, a project or portfolio manager who uses the same PR on all occasions will exhibit unnecessarily poor performance in most cases.
•Iteration is a salient feature of Product Development (PD) projects.•Traditional project management techniques fail to address iteration.•We study the performance of existing priority rules (PRs) ...under iteration.•We also compare the PRs scheduling results to results using genetic algorithms.•We close by showing when to use PRs and when it is best to use the GAs.
Many product development (PD) projects rely on a common pool of scarce resources. In addition to resource constraints, there are precedence constraints among activities within each project. Beyond the feed-forward dependencies among activities, in PD projects it is common for feedback dependencies to exist that can result in activity rework or iteration.
In such a multi-project, resource-constrained, iterative environment, this paper proposes two new genetic algorithm (GA) approaches for scheduling project activities. The objective is to minimize the overall duration of the portfolio of PD projects. These proposed GAs are tested on sample scheduling problems with and without stochastic feedback. We show that these algorithms provide quick convergence to a globally optimal solution.
Furthermore, we conducted a comparative analysis of the proposed GAs with 31 published priority rules (PRs), using test problems generated to the specifications of project, activity, and resource-related characteristics such as network density (complexity), resource distribution, resource contention, and rework probability (amount of iteration). The GAs performed better than the PRs as each of these factors increased. We close the paper by providing managers with a decision matrix showing when it is best to use the published PRs and when it is best to use the GAs.
Projects should create value. That is the desire and plan, but uncertainties cloud the paths to this destination. All project work should add value in terms of both the resources consumed and the ...benefits provided (e.g., scope, quality, technical performance, features, and functions), yet adding value is not always straightforward. Conventional techniques such as earned value management focus on time and cost but do not address quality, uncertainty, risk, and opportunity. An integrated approach is needed to account for all of these. This paper presents an integrated framework for quantifying and monitoring project value in terms of the key attributes that matter to its stakeholders. The framework distinguishes four types of project value: desired, goal, likely , and actual. Project management is value management. Project goals, capabilities, risks, and opportunities are evaluated with respect to each key attribute of the desired value. The project value, risk, and opportunity framework is useful for project planning, monitoring, control, and tradeoff decision support. An example project, developing a drone aircraft, demonstrates the framework's application to project planning and monitoring, including setting project goals that balance risk and opportunity. New indices for risk, opportunity, and learning are introduced to track project progress and operationalize new constructs for researchers.
Despite many uncertainties, industrial fields such as energy (eg, oil rigs), utilities infrastructure (eg, telecommunications), space systems, transportation systems, construction, and manufacturing ...make large and mostly irreversible investments in systems with potentially long life cycles. The life cycle value of such systems may be increased significantly by designing in the flexibility to make future changes. This paper presents a systematic methodology for designers to identify flexible design opportunities (FDOs) more comprehensively and earlier in the system design process. The methodology guides designers to generate flexible design concepts that can be assessed, selected, and integrated into a design during an early stage of the design process. We demonstrate and validate the FDO methodology on a case in the offshore drilling industry.
The process for designing and developing complex system products—all of the activities performed and the information and other work products produced—is essential to innovative and competitive ...enterprises. This process is dynamic, complex, and complicated, and the people who understand it best are in short supply and may not be around for the next project. For a variety of reasons, models of this process are important to systems engineers and managers. A 2006 paper in this journal discussed key concepts in modeling product development (PD) processes. This paper follows by presenting a general approach to building PD process models, integrative process modeling (IPM), which support a wide variety of purposes, such as providing evidence for external certifications, planning projects and programs, and more—but especially serving as a salient repository for crucial organizational information. Although a centralized team of modeling experts leads the overall IPM endeavor, distributed agents define various processes and activities, thereby capturing PD information across very large organizations. The paper discusses management of the model‐building project and subsequent operations, as well as software tool support and model storage. A collection of helpful heuristics guides IPM to help organizations improve the long‐term value provided by PD process modeling.
Given the crucial role of process modeling in product development (PD) project management research and practice, and the variety of models proposed in the literature, a survey of the PD process ...modeling literature is timely and valuable. In this work, we focus on the activity network‐based process models that support PD project management and present a comprehensive survey of the literature published in the last decade. To organize our survey, we use a framework based on the purposes of PD process models: project visualization, project planning, project control, and project development. For each purpose, we provide an overview of the relevant models, highlight their key assumptions and findings, synthesize key insights, and illuminate avenues for further research. Although the survey reveals many insights and opportunities, five major areas for future study became apparent: activity interactions, global process improvements, process models as an organizing structure for knowledge management, modeling in cases of uncertainty and ambiguity, and determining the optimum amount of process prescription and structure for an innovative project.
Can Innovation Be Lean? Browning, Tyson R.; Sanders, Nada R.
California management review,
07/2012, Letnik:
54, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Every executive has heard about the importance of Lean as a means of eliminating waste and “fat.” However, when operations are novel and complex—as in product development, research, information ...technology, and many other kinds of projects—cutting out the “fat” turns out to be much more challenging. To understand Lean in an environment characterized by extreme novelty and complexity, we drew on our experiences with a number of processes, and in particular Lockheed Martin's Lean implementation for the F-22 fighter aircraft. Our findings lead to a path that executives and managers can follow to become Lean without compromising innovation.
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