Optimal timing of project control points

Abstract

The project control cycle consists of measuring the status of the project, comparing to the plan, analysis of the deviations, and implementing any appropriate corrective actions. We present an analytical framework for determining the optimal timing of project control points throughout the life cycle of the project. Our approach is based on maximizing the amount of information generated by the control points, which depends on the intensity of the activities carried out since the last control point and on the time elapsed since their execution. The optimization problem is solved with a dynamic programming approach. We report the results of numerical experimentation with the model involving different types of activity intensity profiles and several levels of information loss. For each combination, we compared the optimal amount of information to the amount of information obtained with two simpler policies: control at equal time intervals, and control at equal activity contents intervals. We also investigated the effect of adding more control points on the amount of information generated.