Time‐cost tradeoffs in uncertain empirical research projects

F. M. Scherer

Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 1966, vol. 13, issue 1, 71-82

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between research project cost and expected time to completion under various scheduling strategies; it assumes that many potential technical approaches to the research problem can be identified; and that each approach has a low but finite subjective probability of success. It is shown that under a variety of assumptions, expected time to project completion can be reduced, but that as a result expected project cost rises at an increasing rate. Some cases in which this convex time‐cost tradeoff relationship might not hold generally are identified. When the time‐cost tradeoff function is convex, the desirability of concurrent as opposed to series scheduling of approaches depends crucially upon the depth of the stream of benefits expected to be realized upon successful project completion. The deeper the benefit stream is, the more desirable concurrent scheduling is.

Date: 1966
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/nav.3800130106

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:navlog:v:13:y:1966:i:1:p:71-82

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Naval Research Logistics Quarterly from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().