Integration of technical, cost, and schedule risks in project management

This paper describes a computerized method for integrating technical, cost, and schedule risk. This is significant because technical, cost, and schedule risk should and can be addressed within the context of a single analytical methodology. Technical, cost, and schedule preference are represented as the project manager’s utility function, u(TCS). The expected value of the utility function is calculated for various alternatives, in the context of a decision tree. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to elicit the utility functions and to assign probabilities to the decision tree. The alternative with the maximum E[u(TCS)] is the implied alternative of choice.