This textbook teaches the basic concepts and methods of project management, but also explains how to convert it to useful results in practice. Project management offers a promising working area for theoretical and practical applications, and developing software and decision support systems (DSS). This book specifically focuses on project planning and control, with an emphasis on mathematical modeling. Models and algorithms establish a good starting point for students to study the relevant literature and support pursuing academic work in related fields. The book provides an introduction to theoretical concepts, and it also provides detailed explanations, application examples and case studies that deal with real life problems. The chapter topics include questions that underlie critical thinking, interpretation, analytics, and making comparisons. Learning outcomes are defined and the content of the book is structured in accordance with these goals.
Chapter 1 begins by introducing the basic concepts, methods and processes of project management. Chapter 2 explores the fundamentals of organizing and managing projects from an organization’s perspective. Issues related to project team formation, role of project managers, and matrix organization are discussed. Chapter 3 is devoted to project modeling and planning. It explains how to collect proper data in order to perform an analysis and develop mathematical models. Chapter 4 introduces deterministic scheduling models, which can be used in constructing the time schedules. Models employing time-based and finance-based objectives are introduced. Chapter 5 focuses on the time/cost trade-off problem, explaining how to reduce the duration of some of the activities and therefore accelerate the project duration at the expense of additional costs. Chapter 6 introduces different resource management policies including resource portfolio management. Chapter 7 discusses models and methods of scheduling in case of uncertainty models and methods of scheduling in case of uncertainty. Chapter 8 highlights contract types and payment schedules. It explores identification and allocation of risk in contracts, project control issues, disputes and resolution management. Different models and decision support systems are presented in Chapter 9 in order to investigate client-contractor negotiations and the bidding process from different aspects. Chapter 10 covers monitoring and control, mainly the processes and methods behind them. Chapter 11 brings together qualitative and quantitative techniques with simulation and software applications. The design of a risk management process is introduced in detail and at the hand of a case study. Chapter 12 examines several models and approaches of uncertainty in project scheduling, dealing with various aspects of stochastic nature of the decision environment and robustness. Chapter 13 explains the mathematical formulation and solution procedures for resource constrained project scheduling. The project selection problem is inherently a multi-objective problem and is treated as such in Chapter 14. Several models and solution techniques including robust selection methods are introduced. Finally Chapter 15 evaluates recent approaches and promising research areas in project management including strategic project management, agile approaches, and data management in project modeling in the big data era.
Gündüz Ulusoy received his BSc in mechanical engineering from Robert College, Istanbul in 1970; MSc in mechanical engineering from University of Rochester in 1972 and PhD in operations research from Virginia Tech in 1975. He served in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Bogaziçi University in Istanbul as a faculty member (1976-1999) and as Head of Department (1985-1993). He also served as Vice President of Bogaziçi University (1992-1994). He was presented the “Best Teaching Award” by the students of Bogaziçi University (1980). In 1983 he worked as a NATO postgraduate research fellow in the Operational Research Department in Lancaster University. He spent a year on leave from Bogaziçi University at Arçelik Company in Istanbul. He was a member of the Executive Board of the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council (1993-1997) and Chairman of the Executive Board of the Marmara Research Center (1995-1997). He served on the Executive Board of the Turkish Quality Association (19982002) and chaired its Quality Award Committee (1998-2002). He also served on the Board of Bogaziçi University Alumni Association (1988-1991) and on the Board of Elginkan Foundation (1994-2000). He is a founding member of the Science Foundation and of the Turkish Informatics Foundation. In 1999 he joined the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences in Sabanci University and established the Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program there. He founded and became the Co-Coordinator of the Leaders for Industry Program (2001-2004). In 2003 he founded the TUSIAD Sabanci University Competitiveness Forum and has been serving as its Director since then. He was an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Operational Research, Chief Editor of the Turkish Journal of Operational Research and served as the Guest Editor for several academic journals. Currently, he’s the Associate Editor of the Turkish Journal of Operational Research and the Journal of Operations and Logistics. His primary research areas are competitiveness, innovation and manufacturing strategies, evolutionary algorithms, and project and manufacturing management.
Öncü Hazir is currently working as an associate professor in Rennes School of Business. He received his BS degree in Industrial Engineering and MBA degree from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He completed his Ph.D at the Department of Business Administration in Bilkent University in 2008. His dissertation was on project scheduling. He worked as a post-doctorate researcher in Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 and in Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne and as an associate professor in TED University. He participated in various research projects in project planning and control, machine scheduling and assembly line balancing and published several papers in operations research and management journals.
