Application of Evaluation Lines in Project Planning and Control

Abstract

The efficient display of project schedules and the comparison between the plans and the actual data have been key areas of project management since the appearance of planning techniques. Various graphic techniques exist for displaying the project data, among which the most widespread is the Gantt chart, which is associated with Henry Gantt. The Gantt chart has gone through great development in the past decades: the logic-Gantt, which also contains the logical relationships, has appeared; furthermore, the available project planning applications provide several possibilities for the efficient display of the schedules and for the comparison of different plan versions and the planned and actual conditions. In this paper, a new graphic system is introduced, which makes the overview of large- scale projects much faster. This new system is called the system of evaluation lines. Its development has been inspired by the concept of the progress line, which is already present in project planning systems. In this sense, the progress line can be considered as a type of evaluation line. In the paper, the definition of the evaluation line is given and the evaluation lines are grouped according to their common characteristics. Then some, more interesting examples are shown. The paper redefines the concept of the progress lines, and sheds light on the disadvantages of the former solutions.