An Introduction to Project Modeling and Planning

This textbook teaches the basic concepts and methods of project management, but also explains how to convert it to useful results in practice. Project management offers a promising working area for theoretical and practical applications, and developing software and decision support systems (DSS). This book specifically focuses on project planning and control, with an emphasis on mathematical modeling. Models and algorithms establish a good starting point for students to study the relevant literature and support pursuing academic work in related fields. The book provides an introduction to theoretical concepts, and it also provides detailed explanations, application examples and case studies that deal with real life problems. The chapter topics include questions that underlie critical thinking, interpretation, analytics, and making comparisons. Learning outcomes are defined and the content of the book is structured in accordance with these goals. Chapter 1 begins by introducing the basic concepts, methods and processes of project management. Chapter 2 explores the fundamentals of organizing and managing projects from an organization’s perspective. Issues related to project team formation, role of project managers, and matrix organization are discussed. Chapter 3 is devoted to project modeling and planning. It explains how to collect proper data in order to perform an analysis and develop mathematical models. Chapter 4 introduces deterministic scheduling models, which can be used in constructing the time schedules. Models employing time-based and finance-based objectives are introduced. Chapter 5 focuses on the time/cost trade-off problem, explaining how to reduce the duration of some of the activities and therefore accelerate the project duration at the expense of…