QUALITY OF PROJECT SCHEDULES IN INDUSTRIAL PROJECTS

A realistic schedule is often defined as a critical success factor in project management research. Project scheduling methodology has been studied widely, and various tools have been developed for accurate scheduling. Despite the vast academic and operational development effort, modelling project duration with schedules in a realistic way remains difficult. The prevailing method of using previous similar project schedules often includes powerful assumptions about the schedule applicability. Furthermore, the lack of analytic models and tools for schedule evaluation prevents the pre-project estimation of schedule quality. The purpose of this study was to review the current literature on project scheduling research and determine methods to evaluate the quality of composed schedules. In addition, the study explored the use of software-based scheduling tools and considered the feasibility of one particular computer program intended for the analysis of schedule quality. The research was conducted by first reviewing the academic literature on project scheduling and its history. Despite the extensive literature on the subject, research focused on the evaluation of schedule quality was scarce. Software-based Planalyzer methodology was chosen for the analysis of the research because that tool is designed for evaluating complex structures of projec