Technical Note---Managing a Secret Project

Edieal Pinker (), Joseph Szmerekovsky () and Vera Tilson ()
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Edieal Pinker: University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627
Joseph Szmerekovsky: North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota 58102
Vera Tilson: University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627

Operations Research, 2013, vol. 61, issue 1, 65-72

Abstract: We study project scheduling in a competitive setting taking the perspective of a project manager with an adversary, using a Stackelberg game format. The project manager seeks to limit the adversary's opportunity to react to the project and therefore wants to manage the project in a way that keeps the adversary “in the dark” as long as possible while completing the project on time. We formulate and illustrate a new form of project management problem for secret projects where the project manager uses a combination of deception, task scheduling, and crashing to minimize the time between when the adversary initiates a response to the project to when the project is completed. We propose a novel mixed-integer linear programming formulation for the problem and determine characteristics of optimal schedules in this context. Using a detailed example of nuclear weapons development, we illustrate the interconnectedness of the deception, task scheduling, and crashing, and how these influence adversary behavior.

Keywords: competitive project scheduling; exposed time; secret projects; covert operations; interdiction; mixed-integer linear programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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