This paper aims to make a contribution to theory, as well as to practice, by identifying which practices are used by most private organizations in general and by sector of activity. The influence of practitioners' characteristics in the choice of project management practices and their use in groups are also analyzed. The results show that the most used project management practices are Kick-off Meeting, Activity List, Progress Meetings, Gantt Chart and Baseline Plan, however, differences between activity sectors and practitioners' characteristics were found. The results also indicate that the most used project management practices are, in fact, used as toolsets.

PurposeThis paper proposes a decision support model that can be used to help decide the destination of defective products, for mass production industries. The objective of this model is to reduce the cost of the defect, and consequently reduce the total quality costs.Design/methodology/approachThe decision model was developed based on the theory of quality costs and decision-making models, considering the practical aspects of reality through data collection, observation and experience in Industrial Pole of Manaus (Brazil) industries. A decision model adjusted to reality assists in the construction of the decision process, indicating the facts, data collection and the planning of the actions to choose the best alternative.FindingsThe specific contributions of this research are: (1) define a sequential structure of actions, effects and costs associated with defective items; (2) allow a comprehensive approach to failure costs, including various elements of lost opportunity costs; (3) minimize failure costs, and consequently reduce total quality costs, without necessarily investing in prevention and assessment; (4) describe the use and application of the built theory; (5) identify the quality cost elements most representative in existence of defective items; and (6) identify improvement points in the management of possible future defective items.Originality/valueMuch of the work of implementation of quality cost models do not emphasize the analysis of the destination of defective items. Also, there are no studies that use decision models with identification, accounting and evaluation of effects and criteria of quality, productivity and cost to define the destination of manufacture defective items.

No abstract

In practice, project managers must cope with uncertainty, and must manipulate the allocation of their resources adaptively in order to achieve their ultimate objectives. Yet, treatments of the well-known 'resource constrained project scheduling problem' have been deterministic and static, and have addressed mostly unimodal activities. We present an approach to resource allocation under stochastic conditions for multimodal activity networks. Optimization is via dynamic programming, which proves to be demanding computationally. We suggest approximation schemes that do not detract signi…cantly from optimality, but are modest in their computational requirements.

Abstract. This paper describes a quantitative research approach for identifying key project managers' competences for different types of projects. By identifying the perceived most valuable project manager competences, as having the most potential for increased contribution to project management (PM) performance, practitioners and organizations can select their priorities when developing their PM practices. The 46 competences (technical, behavioural and contextual) provided by IPMA (International Project Management Association) were surveyed through an online questionnaire. Three dimensions to distinguish project types were used: application area, innovation and complexity. Completed questionnaires were received from 96 project managers from Portugal. The results showed that 13 key competences (20%) were common to the majority of the projects. Most of these are behavioural competences, such as: ethics, reliability, engagement, openness, and leadership. It was also observed a clear correlation between technical competences and project complexity.

No abstract

We consider an extension of the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) to multi-level (or multi-mode) activities. Each activity must be allocated exactly one unit of each required resource and the resource unit may be used at any of its specified levels. The processing time of an activity is given by the maximum of the durations that would result from a specific allocation of resources. The objective is to find the optimal solution that minimizes the overall project cost which includes a penalty for tardiness beyond the specified delivery date as well as a bonus for early delivery. We give some of the most important solution details and we report on the preliminary results obtained. The implementation was designed using the C# language.

Earned Value Management (EVM) and Project Risk Management are normally considered separately in Project Management. Referring PMBoK®, EVM is part of Project Time Management and Project Cost Management knowledge areas, while Project Risk Management is a different knowledge area with no apparent relation with the previous ones, although the fundamentals of EVM are fully influenced by risk management. This paper seeks to clarify the mechanisms of this relation, and in which points they meet or affect each other. The interconnection between the two methods was explored in this study and a framework of integration between them was proposed. The framework was implemented in Excel resulting in a set of tools that can be useful in monitoring and controlling a project.