Dynamic Mathematical Models of Projects (Part1. High-Level Quantitative Representation of Projects Without Accounting For Design Feedbacks)

PM World Today November 2010 (Vol XII, Issue XI)
PM World Today is a free monthly eJournal - Subscriptions available at http://www.pmworldtoday.net Page 1

Dynamic Mathematical Models of Projects
(Part1. High-level quantitative representation of projects
without accounting for design feedbacks)

By Pavel Barseghyan, PhD

Abstract

The dynamics of projects and variability of the number of people working on them are the
circumstances which must be taken into account during the planning of both at the level of
enterprises and at the level of individual projects. Usually for the solution of this problem are
used experience and intuition of professionals. Moreover, this approach is the basis of
contemporary practical project management.

However, increasing of the number of projects in enterprises and increasing the size of individual
projects, as well as the tightening of market requirements lead to the fact that only high
professionalism and experience are insufficient to successfully address the complex challenges
of this kind.

Analysis of this process shows that despite the skepticism of industry in quantitative methods in
this area, one way or another, the development of the field of project management requires
further improvement of mathematical models and methods in it.

In general, at the beginning of project works and planning at the enterprise level the specific
details of work are unknown, so the use of discrete mathematical methods in the initial phases of
planning process is inappropriate. For these purposes, the use of continuous mathematical
methods is more convenient, because under the conditions mentioned above they are more
compact and flexible.

Thus, for high level control of enterprises and individual projects there is a need for such
quantitative methods that are able to describe the dynamics of the ongoing processes with the aid
of continuous mathematical models and methods. In their turn the history and experience of
quantitative sciences show that the more effective means for solving such dynamic problems are
differential equations.

Moreover, these equations allow the presentation of the processes related with project planning,
with varying degrees of detail. In particular, these representations of projects can be with and
without taking into account the feedbacks in the design process.

This paper is devoted to the presentation of projects by means of differential equations without
taking into account of feedbacks in the design process


Key words: Mathematical models of projects, differential equations of projects, dynamic power
of project teams, project execution as a growth process, Richards differential equation, Fisher
Kolmogorov differential equation.

Introduction:

The world of projects is very diverse in its practical manifestations, but all projects have one
common behavioral feature. It lies in the fact that usually the typical project starts with the work
of limited number of high professionals who carry out the project at the high or structural level.
The main goal of this stage is the feasibility analysis and identification of the ways of further
implementation of the project.

If there is no doubt in the feasibility of the project, then in the course of its further
implementation the scope of project work is gradually increasing. As a result, the number of
people working on the project is increasing too. But depending on the size of the project and its
commercial importance, the growth rate of the number of working people on the project can vary
widely.

Depending on this, after some period of time, which in turn can vary widely too, the number of
people working on the project reaches its maximum value.
After this the number of people working on the project is gradually decreasing since the work is
nearing its completion.

But it should be noted that the increase of the speed of work is possible by increasing the degree
of its parallelism, which in turn is associated with additional risks.

These risks relate to the fact that the increasing of the degree of concurrency of project works
increases the likelihood that without completion of some works their next steps can begin.
This leads to the fact that after a certain degree of parallel operations the intensity of the birth of
errors in the project increases nonlinearly, which in turn leads to a sharp decline in productivity
of project works.

Since, in turn, increase of the degree of concurrency of project works is possible by increasing
the number of parallel working people, then this means that in terms of feasibility of the project
the number of people and the duration of work are not interchangeable. In addition, the feasible
lower limit of the duration of work is conditioned by the reasons that are associated with risk.

On the other hand, if we consider possible ways to reduce these risks by converting the work into
a set of purely sequential actions, we could face the market risks associated with the delays in
work.

So, if both the high degree of parallel work, and pure successive work are faced with
considerations related to risk, then it means that based only on considerations of risk, there must
be an optimum degree of parallelism of the work of people, for which the risks are minimal.


In addition, since the degree of parallel work is closely related to the number of working people
and the duration of work, this in turn means that the total effort must have a minimum for some
optimal degree of the paralellism of work.

For a quantitative presentation of all of these considerations it is necessary to have general
descriptions of the dynamics of project work in the form of differential equations.

Staffing profile and dynamic power of projects

The behavior described above is really inherent in most projects and complies with the
implementation of each phase of the project by the minimum number of people.
The latter requirement, in turn, meets the requirement of minimum total effort of the project,
since effort is associated with the number of people employed by the following expression [1].

dt t N E
t
}
=
0
) (
(1)

The typical high-level representation of the dynamics of the number of people working on the
project is shown in Fig.1.

Project staffing, ) (t N
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5
10
15
20
25
Time, t
Fig.1 Project staffing as a function of time

Another characteristic feature of the project is that for most of them the effort ) (t E spent on the
project and the total amount of work ) (t W and some other parameters are increasing functions of
time with S shape.


The total amount of work performed as a function of time is given by the expression

t t t d P N t W
t
}
=
0
) ( ) ( ) (
(2)

Here ) (t P is the team productivity as a function of time.

In the special static case when const N t N = = ) ( therefore const P t P = = ) ( , and the duration of
the project is T , the integral (2) becomes a simple formula which is the state equation of the
project [2]

T N P W * * = . (3)

So the integral (2) also represents the state of the project, only in the dynamic mode.
In addition, by analogy with the static power of the project team lets introduce the concept of its
dynamic power. Static power of the project team is determined by the expression [2]

N P H * = . (4)

By analogy with this expression, dynamic power of the project team is defined as

) ( * ) ( ) ( t N t P t H = . (5)

Substituting this expression into the integral (2) we obtain

t t d H t W
t
}
=
0
) ( ) (
. (6)

The differentiation of this integral with respect to time results

) (
) (
t H
dt
t dW
=
. (7)

That is the dynamic power of the project team is the speed of work performance
dt
t dW ) (
.
This in turn means that if somehow we could find the function ) (t W , then that will allow using
the expression (7) to find out the dynamic power ) (t H of the project team.


This in its turn means that with the aid of the expression (5) it is possible to find out the project
staffing profile ) (t N too. In the specific case when 1 ) ( = t N , expression (7) becomes [3]

) (
) (
t P
dt
t dW
=
. (8)

Requirements to the functions for describing the dynamics of projects

The basic requirements that should be presented to the functions for describing the dynamics of
projects is that during the different types of assessments they need to adequately reflect different
behavioral characteristics of projects.

The behavioral manifestations of projects like the growth of the project staffing curve and its
further declining, as well as the S curves for the description of the growth of total project effort
and the total amount of work are insufficient for the projects adequate behavioral representation.

Despite its approximate character, these high-level presentations of project staffing functions are
very important for the preliminary decisions about resource allocation at the corporate and
program level.

In fact, the continuous function, shown in Fig.1 is the project staffing function in its embrionic
form, which by gradually refining will take its final shape, for example, in the form of Gantt
chart.

This appoximate representation of project staffing functions in the continuous form has its
undeniable advantages for high-level corporate planning. The most important of these
advantages is the opportunity of the flexible control of the staffing functions of projects, which
allows us to analyze a large number of preliminary options for the allocation of resources at the
corporate and program level.

From this perspective, in particular, it is important the behavioral adequate representation of the
initial stages of projects. It is known that the project work cannot be deployed at once, for a short
time because it is associated with different risks. For this reason, dynamic models of the projects
should be able to reflect the gradual process of resource mobilization for a project in its initial
stages.

To meet this requirement the staffing function ) (t N should be concave in the initial stages of the
project. From the quantitative point of view, or in the language of mathematics, this means that
in addition to the correctness of the behavior of ) (t N , it is also important the correctness of the
behavior of its derivatives.

Concavity of the staffing function ) (t N in the initial stages of the project can be verified by the
sign of the second derivative of this function. If the second derivative of the project staffing


function 0 ) (
' '
> t N , then this function has a correct behavior and can adequately represent the
dynamics of the project in its initial stages.

From this perspective it is interesting to study the Rayleigh curve [4] which has been used widely
for the presentation of the stuffing functions of projects.
Examining the behavioral correctness of this function we can find that for Rayleigh curve
0 ) (
' '
< t N which means that this function, at least in the initial stages of the project does not
adequately reflect the behavior of the project.

In terms of adequate representation of the behavior of projects are of great interest functions that
can flexibly describe the diversity of the project staffing profiles. Such capabilities have
Richards functions [5], whose use for high-level behavioral synthesis of staffing functions has
great prospects.

Project execution as a growth process

To describe the dynamics of projects with quantitative methods there are a variety of possible
approaches. Comparative analysis of these methods shows that for this purpose the growth
mathematical models, which are widespread in biology, demography, economics, and many
other areas, are very promising.

Analysis of design work from this perspective shows that many quantitative parameters of
projects are increasing function of time, as are the results of the peculiar processes of
accumulation. These parameters are the total number of work spent on the project ) (t W , the total
wasted effort ) (t E , the total number of errors, and so on.

This approach makes it possible to use mathematical models of growth to study the dynamics of
projects. Besides the use of these models creates another possibility related to the quantitative
analysis of the scheduling risks of projects.

All the project parameters listed above have a random character and their adequate quantitative
representation can greatly contribute to the development of the new and improved methods of
scheduling risk analysis.

It is known that regardless of the nature of random processes, the sun of these random processes
have a Markov property [6]. This means that depending on the nature of growth processes of
project parameters, those can be viewed as Markov processes and proceeding from that can be
obtained the corresponding Fokker-Planck equations [7]. The solutions of these equations allow
for a new approach to the challenges associated with analysis of timing risks of projects.

Differential equation of project works


Differential equation (8) for the quantitative representation of people's work process describes
the monotone homogeneous human labor and can hardly be used to adequately quantify the
project works. Project works have certain special features that distinguish them from other types
of works performed by human beings.

The fact that the implementation of projects, related to the execution of a limited amount of work
for a limited time, forces to have a different approach to the quantification of such works which
is different from the approach in the case of a homogeneous work [3].

In particular, equation (8) does not take into account the fact that the rate of implementation of
project works
dt
dW
depends on how much work is done already. In other words, this means that
the value of
dt
dW
along with other parameters of the project is also a function of ) (t W . Moreover,
for the work, the volume of which is known in advance and is equal to
m
W , the rate of work
performance
dt
dW
depends not only on the amount of the work already done, but it is also
depends on how much work ) (t W W
m
still remains for its completion.

Assuming in the simple case that the rate of project implementation
dt
dW
is proportional both to
the work already done ) (t W and to the work have not yet completed ) (t W W
m
, we obtain the
differential equation for the dynamics of work performance [8].

)] ( )[ ( t W W t W
W dt
dW
m
m
=
|
, (9)

Here | is a constant, which, along with other parameters, depends on the project objectives and
their priorities.
The solution of this equation with the initial condition
0
W has the form [9]

) 1 (
) (
0
0
+
=
t
m
t
m
e W W
e W W
t W
|
|
(10)

Using expressions (7) and (10) one can obtain the dynamic power of project team

2
0
0 0
)] 1 ( [
) (
) (
+

= =
t
m
m
t
m
e W W
W W e W W
dt
dW
t H
|
|
|
(11)


Team Power, ) (t H

0 20 40 60 80 100
5000
10 000
15 000
20 000
25 000
30 000
Time, t

Fig.2 Team power as a function of time

This function is a symmetric one (Fig.2) and consequently we will have a symmetric project
staffing function ) (t N too (Fig.3).


0 20 40 60 80 100
5
10
15
20
25
30
Time, t
Fig.3 Symmetric staffing profile of a project

As we can see, the project staffing function ) (t N is symmetrical too, which is not entirely
consistent with the requirements of project management practices.


From this perspective, the requirements of project management can be better satisfied with
asymmetric staffing functions of projects.

Differential equation for describing asymmetric staffing functions

To adequately represent the diversity of practical asymmetric staffing functions are convenient
different generalizations [10] of differential equation (9).

If during the derivation of this equation, we would consider that the finished portion of
work ) (t W and the portion of work that have not yet completed ) (t W W
m
have different effects
on the rate of the execution of work
dt
dW
, then we can have a new differential equation for the
growth of work in the following form.

o
|
)] ( )[ ( t W W t W
W dt
dW
m
m
= (12)

In this equation, coefficients o and
provide the asymmetric view of project staffing functions.

10 20 30 40 50 60 70
5
10
15
20
25
Time, t

Fig.4 Three different asymmetric staffing functions as solutions of the same differential equation

Fig.4 presents three different staffing profiles of projects, that are the solutions of the equation
(12). These solutions show three profiles with early, normal and late staffing peaks.

Links of resource allocation with the objectives of the project



The problem of resource allocation at the highest level of planning is reduced to the following
two basic problems.
1. Estimation of the needed total effort E for project implementation,
2. Distribution of effort E allotted for the project, over time, or equivalently, to find the number
of employed people ) (t N as a function of time.

Analysis of project data shows that the function ) (t N can take many forms. These forms mainly
reflect an early or late resource mobilization for the implementation of project works.
On the other hand it is easy to see that the function ) (t N is closely related to the development
cost C , since the latter has a direct relationship with the total effort of the project E .

dt t N E C
t
}
=
0
) ( ~
. (13)

Besides, the shapes of functions ) (t N , in the sense of early or late mobilization of recourses is
directly linked with the considerations of risk, because projects with the late peak of the number
of people are more risky than projects with early peaks.

10 20 30 40 50 60 70
5
10
15
20
25
30
Time, t
Fig.5 Example of uniform distribution of resources with the aid of asymmetric staffing curves

In addition, when considering the problems of recourse allocation at the enterprise or program
level with limited recourses it is becoming clear that the combination of early and late peaks can
be attain a more efficient allocation of recourses.


In Fig.5 is shown an example of uniform distribution of resources at the enterprise level as a
compromise between the objectives of the projects.

Thus the analysis shows that the function of workforce distribution ) (t N is closely related with
the goals and objectives of projects.

This is means that in each case the staffing curve of a specific project is the result of a trade-off
between the objectives at the enterprise level. This creates important preconditions for the
establishment of the methodology of behavioral synthesis of the staffing curves of projects at the
level of enterprises, linking it with goals of the projects and restrictions on them.

Diffusion generalization of the logistic equation

Quantitative representation of the project staffing profile (9) can be generalized for the unifying
under a single modeling approach both the issues related to resource allocation, and issues
relating to risk assessments. In order to do this one can add in the equation (9) a new diffusion
term
2
2
x
W
D
c
c
, after which it takes the form

2
2
)] ( )[ (
x
W
D t W W t W
W t
W
m
m
c
c
+ =
c
c |
. (14)

In mathematics this equation is known as the Fisher-Kolmogorov equation, which describes the
propagation of waves of different physical nature in space and time.

In our case, the equation (14) describes the propagation of the wave of working activities related
to the implementation of the project, along the time axis. Analysis of the probabilistic wave of
the labor activities along the time axis gives the opportunity to develop new approaches to the
problems of project timing risks.

Conclusions

1. Based on the considerations of risk, there must be some optimal degree of parallelism of
design work, in which the resulting risk of the company has a minimum value.

2. Project execution process can be modeled as a process of accumulation or growth of the
completed work, which makes it possible to use known mathematical models of growth
in project management.

3. Such a modeling approach to the representation of projects allows for flexible description
of the dynamics of the number of people working on the project, including their diversity,
asymmetry, and controllability.


4. In turn, the asymmetry and control the number of people working on the project creates
opportunities to solve problems of resource allocation at the enterprise level.

5. Asymmetric and manageable staffing functions of projects may have broad applications
in developing of the methods of behavioral synthesis of projects by linking the staffing
functions of projects with their goals and objectives.

References

1. Pavel Barseghyan (2009). Problems of the Mathematical Theory of Human Work
(Principles of mathematical modeling in project management). PM World Today
August 2009 (Vol XI, Issue VIII).
2. Pavel Barseghyan (2009). Principles of Top-Down Quantitative Analysis of Projects. Part
1: State Equation of Projects and Project Change Analysis. PM World Today May 2009
(Vol XI, Issue V).
3. Pavel Barseghyan Dynamic Mathematical Models of Human Work (Differential
Equations of Human Labor). PM World Today October 2010 (Vol XII, Issue X).
4. Rayleigh distribution. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_distribution
5. Richards functions. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_logistic_function
6. S. Karlin and H. M. Taylor. "A First Course in Stochastic Processes." Academic Press,
1975 (second edition).
7. Bharucha-Reid A. T. Elements of the Theory of Markov Processes and Their
Applications. 1960. MC GROW-HILL.
8. Pavel Barseghyan (1998). Stability and convergence of the million transistor chip
design. Information Technologies and Management. 2, 1998. Yerevan (in Armenian
language).
9. Generalised logistic function. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_logistic_function
10. Banks R. B. Growth and Diffusion Phenomena. Mathematical frameworks and
applications. Springer-Verlag. 1994.



About the Author



Pavel Barseghyan, PhD

Author

Dr. Pavel Barseghyan is a consultant in the field of
quantitative project management, project data
mining and organizational science. He is the founder
of Systemic PM, LLC, a project management
company. Has over 40 years experience in academia, the electronics industry,
the EDA industry and Project Management Research and tools development.
During the period of 1999-2010 he was the Vice President of Research for
Numetrics Management Systems. Prior to joining Numetrics, Dr. Barseghyan
worked as an R&D manager at Infinite Technology Corp. in Texas. He was also a
founder and the president of an EDA start-up company, DAN Technologies, Ltd.
that focused on high-level chip design planning and RTL structural floor planning
technologies. Before joining ITC, Dr. Barseghyan was head of the Electronic
Design and CAD department at the State Engineering University of Armenia,
focusing on development of the Theory of Massively Interconnected Systems and
its applications to electronic design. During the period of 1975-1990, he was also
a member of the University Educational Policy Commission for Electronic Design
and CAD Direction in the Higher Education Ministry of the former USSR. Earlier in
his career he was a senior researcher in Yerevan Research and Development
Institute of Mathematical Machines (Armenia). He is an author of nine
monographs and textbooks and more than 100 scientific articles in the area of
quantitative project management, mathematical theory of human work,
electronic design and EDA methodologies, and tools development. More than 10
Ph.D. degrees have been awarded under his supervision. Dr. Barseghyan holds
an MS in Electrical Engineering (1967) and Ph.D. (1972) and Doctor of Technical
Sciences (1990) in Computer Engineering from Yerevan Polytechnic Institute
(Armenia). Pavel can be contacted at pavel@systemicpm.com.

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PM World Today November 2010 (Vol XII, Issue XI)

PM World Today is a free monthly eJournal - Subscriptions available at http://www.pmworldtoday.net Page 1

provide the asymmetric view of project staffing functions.

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