System Dynamic Model Applying on Analysis of Impact of Schedule Pressure on Project

Project managers often face the problem of how to evaluate the impact of schedule pressure on projects, and need to use overtime and overmanning to get work done on time when schedule pressure occurs. In a project, personnel fatigue, efficiency loss, quality problems and cost increases, which interact to be feedback loops, and the loops create a project´s dynamics system. Some traditional methods, such as CPM, PERT, are inadequate to analyze how these variables interacted and can not determine the impact of schedule pressure on projects. And therefore, there is a need for a model to analyze the impact of schedule pressure on project systematically. In this paper, firstly, system dynamics is introduced to develop a model to analyze the impact of schedule pressure on project quantitatively. And then a case study is used to testify the validity of the model. Finally, this paper gives the analysis of the results of the model and discusses how projects are affected by schedule pressure. The system dynamics modeling approach offers a useful tool for evaluating the impact of schedule pressure on projects.