Evaluation of mean and variance approximations in three point estimation of task completion times using the beta and the Kumaraswamy distribution

Abstract

Estimation of task and project completion times within IT projects remains one of the most error-prone, but also most critical duties of an IT project manager. Various three-point methods of PERT have been evaluated by assuming that the true distribution is a beta-distribution. We evaluate PERT methods by comparing additionally with the Kumaraswamy distribution, which has an equal claim to be the true a-priori distribution for project completion times. We use skew and kurtosis in order to define test sets instead of simply choosing a range of shape parameters. We validate various approximations proposed in the literature and show that valid approximations are possible.