Application of Improved Critical Chain and Earned Value Technique in Software Engineering & Integrated Project Progress Control

Abstract

Software engineering & Integrated project includes both software development and hardware construction processes ,while its progress control is one of the main problems faced by construction units and owners. Critical chain project management minimized the risk of progress through setting a Buffer, managed stratification of the software and hardware processes of the software engineering and integrated project, compared with traditional progress management methods , which owned natural advantages. Based on the critical chain management methods, this paper proposed an improved technique which combined critical chain with the traditional earned value technique. Drawn references from the PERT Methods, this method determined the scheduled duration in three situations: unconsumed buffer, completely consumed buffer and most likely consumed buffer, transformed the critical chain project duration into traditional earned value project duration, and then carried out the earned value analysis, at the same time, the monitoring of buffer consumption was improved. The method controlled the project schedule at both external and internal levels, which improved the accuracy and flexibility of duration monitoring and conducted an empirical research by taking a software engineering and integrated project as an example.