A comparison of the performance of various project control methods using earned value management systems

Recent literature on project management has emphasised the effort which is spent by the management team during the project control process. Based on this effort, a functional distinction can be made between a top down and a bottom up project control approach. A top down control approach refers to the use of a project control system that generates project based performance metrics to give a general overview of the project performance. Actions are triggered based on these general performance metrics, which need further investigation to detect problems at the activity level. A bottom up project control system refers to a system in which detailed activity information needs to be available constantly during the project control process, which requires more effort. In this research, we propose two new project control approaches, which combines elements of both top down and bottom up control. To this end, we integrate the earned value management/earned schedule (EVM/ES) method with multiple control points inspired by critical chain/buffer management (CC/BM). We show how the EVM/ES control approach is complementary with the concept of buffers and how they can improve the project control process when cleverly combined. These combined top down approaches overcome some of the drawbacks of traditional EVM/ES mentioned in the literature, while minimally increasing the effort spent by the project manager. A large computational experiment is set up to test the approach against other control procedures within a broad range of simulated dynamic project progress situations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.