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Systems dynamics in project management: assessing the impacts of client behaviour in project performance

Systems dynamics in project management: assessing the impacts of client behaviour in project performance
Systems dynamics in project management: assessing the impacts of client behaviour in project performance
The influence of client behaviour on a project is complex, including schedule restrictions on milestones, high demand on progress reports, delays in approving documents, and changes to workscope throughout the life-cycle. Quantifying these effects is important to project managers, in particular for effective communication with the client. Traditional planning and control tools have proved ineffective at providing quick and reliable information. Their tendency to incorporate more detail has increased their complexity, inhibiting practical strategic analyses. System Dynamics provides an alternative view in which these major influences are considered and quantified explicitly. This approach dispenses with much of the detail required by the traditional tools, but enables modelling of the systemic effects which traditional tools cannot model. The authors have developed a conceptual framework in which System Dynamics models are combined with traditional tools providing complementary support, and validated it in a large software project. This paper describes the use of this framework to assess and quantify the impacts of client behaviour. A practical example is discussed.
project management, system dynamics
0160-5682
2-15
Rodrigues, A.G.
0449aef7-f7f2-4d7e-ad08-0f9ab41c84e8
Williams, T.M.
fb409365-0027-4db3-b401-58a8c8992639
Rodrigues, A.G.
0449aef7-f7f2-4d7e-ad08-0f9ab41c84e8
Williams, T.M.
fb409365-0027-4db3-b401-58a8c8992639

Rodrigues, A.G. and Williams, T.M. (1998) Systems dynamics in project management: assessing the impacts of client behaviour in project performance. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 49 (1), 2-15.

Record type: Article

Abstract

The influence of client behaviour on a project is complex, including schedule restrictions on milestones, high demand on progress reports, delays in approving documents, and changes to workscope throughout the life-cycle. Quantifying these effects is important to project managers, in particular for effective communication with the client. Traditional planning and control tools have proved ineffective at providing quick and reliable information. Their tendency to incorporate more detail has increased their complexity, inhibiting practical strategic analyses. System Dynamics provides an alternative view in which these major influences are considered and quantified explicitly. This approach dispenses with much of the detail required by the traditional tools, but enables modelling of the systemic effects which traditional tools cannot model. The authors have developed a conceptual framework in which System Dynamics models are combined with traditional tools providing complementary support, and validated it in a large software project. This paper describes the use of this framework to assess and quantify the impacts of client behaviour. A practical example is discussed.

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More information

Published date: 1998
Keywords: project management, system dynamics

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 36886
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/36886
ISSN: 0160-5682
PURE UUID: cd8e2cf0-25ea-43da-9686-59cea51f4c42

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Date deposited: 23 Apr 2007
Last modified: 09 Jan 2022 03:38

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Contributors

Author: A.G. Rodrigues
Author: T.M. Williams

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