چكيده به لاتين
Project performance improvement has been always a challenge for project managers. This has attracted the attention of researchers to propose methods for performance improvement. In spite of this, the research on the behavioral roots of the agents involved in project accomplishment is meager. Moreover, these researches have mostly relied on qualitative methods than quantitative methods.
In this thesis, a method is proposed to evaluate, forecast and improve project performance. This method uses promise/commitment reliability of agents as the performance indicator at the agent level, and uses project schedule reliability as the performance indicator at the activity level. The method, in fact, investigates the effect of the promise reliability of the agents as a random variable on the project schedule reliability. Simply put, using this method, one can calculate the probability of finishing the project within a given time, based on the promise reliability history of the project agents. The promise reliability of the agents has been a major focus of recent project management methods such as lean and agile methods. Despite its importance, little studies has been conducted on the subject. The method is used eventually as a basis for calculations of pay for performance system, based on which a gamified motivating system is designed.
The proposed method was applied to a number of projects and the results showed that: (1) the promise reliability of the agents had a significant effect on the reliability of the project schedule; (2) changing team arrangement, e.g., employing the punctual agents in the critical positions/activities, the schedule reliability can be imroved; (3) there is an optimal arrangement for which the project duration is minimal and the schedule reliability is at the highest level; (4) the accuracy of the proposed method in evaluation and forecast is satisfactory; (5) the motivating method could increase the schedule performance of the project significantly (about 18%).
The proposed method can be integrated into the modern project management methods such as lean and agile methods and be used in short- and mid-term planning/scheduling practices. Moreover, incorporated to the critical chain methos, the proposed method can provide a basis to calculate the the buffers required for activities.
