Multiple-Criteria Interactive Procedure in Project Management

While constructing project’s schedule three criteria must be considered: time, cost, and scope. Additionally risk related to all that criteria also has to be taken into account. Thus, project planning problem can be defined as a multiple-criteria decision problem under risk. In the paper a project scheduling problem is analyzed. We assume, that various alternative resources allocations can be considered. The decision maker must determine the alternative acceptable with respect to cost and time. A new technique based on computer simulation and interactive approach is proposed. In the first step, simulation experiments are performed to evaluate decision alternatives with respect to criteria. The results are used for constructing distributional evaluations of alternatives. An interactive technique STEP-DPR is employed for generating the final solution of the problem. The procedure uses stochastic dominance and almost-stochastic dominance rules for comparing decision alternatives with respect to criteria. In each iteration a proposal solution is identified. This solution is presented to the decision maker. If he/she is satisfied with the solution – the procedure ends, otherwise the decision maker is asked to provide the information which can be used to improve the solution. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed technique.