The risk of delay of a project in terms of the morphology of its network

Abstract

The risk of the duration of a project exceeding a certain limit has been studied since the early papers proposing the PERT method but no results are available relating the statistical distribution of the total duration with the morphological features of the network. In this paper, a set of indicators is proposed to describe the morphology of the project network and an experimental research is carried out to relate the distribution of the total duration with such indicators. A random generator of project networks is used as well as a model to produce graphical representations of the network. Major results are presented showing how sensitive are the parameters of the distribution of the total duration to the morphology of the network, allowing the project manager to estimate the risk of delay in terms of the proposed indicators. Thus, these results can be used as a decision aid to select alternative designs for the project network taking into account the correspondent risk of delay.