A New Statistical Approach to Project Scheduling

Abstract : This paper describes a comprehensive new procedure for determining a minimum cost project schedule when the activities making up the project have durations which are random variables. The cost of an activity is assumed to be a convex piecewise linear function of the activity's mean duration. The objective is to determine the activity mean durations which both minimize the total project cost and insure that the mean of the corresponding project completion time distribution is less than or equal to a specified project deadline. The entire distribution of the project's completion time under the minimum cost schedule is a valuable by-product.