A note on the selection of priority rules in software packages for project management

Philipp Baumann () and Norbert Trautmann ()
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Philipp Baumann: University of Bern
Norbert Trautmann: University of Bern

Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, 2016, vol. 28, issue 4, No 8, 694-702

Abstract: Abstract Various software packages for project management include a procedure for resource-constrained scheduling. In several packages, the user can influence this procedure by selecting a priority rule. However, the resource-allocation methods that are implemented in the procedures are proprietary information; therefore, the question of how the priority-rule selection impacts the performance of the procedures arises. We experimentally evaluate the resource-allocation methods of eight recent software packages using the 600 instances of the PSPLIB J120 test set. The results of our analysis indicate that applying the default rule tends to outperform a randomly selected rule, whereas applying two randomly selected rules tends to outperform the default rule. Applying a small set of more than two rules further improves the project durations considerably. However, a large number of rules must be applied to obtain the best possible project durations.

Keywords: Project scheduling; Software; Priority rules; Experimental analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10696-016-9236-8

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