Timing of monitoring and control of CPM projects

The timing of monitoring and control of critical path method (CPM) projects is discussed. After describing the necessity for monitoring and controlling activity performance in a project and discussing issues related to monitoring and control of CPM projects, a simulation study is used to compare five different mechanisms for timing the updates of project schedules. Comparison is done with respect to the amount of overrun time, policies incurred, and the amount of crashing effort they require. The policies compared are the following: no monitoring and control, monitoring and control at equal intervals, end-loaded (which advocates a less intensive review in the early stages and more frequent review toward completion of the project), front-loaded (which assumes more frequent review at the beginning and less review toward completion), and completely random monitoring. The results indicate that although there were no significant differences among the policies in the amount of crashing effort spent, the end-loaded mechanism performs best in preventing time overruns