Lessons Learned from Applying the Individuals Control Charts to Monitoring Autocorrelated Project Performance Data

Abstract

The well-known earned value technique measures and evaluates project performance. It uncovers schedule and cost deviations from the baseline plan. However, it is not established to determine acceptable levels of deviations from the baseline. This study applies the Shewhart individuals control charts to overcome this limitation; the charts monitor trends in the project performance behavior and allow them to be detected before the project deviates much from the baseline plan. The study statistically monitors several well-known earned value indexes of a construction project, where the data are autocorrelated and nonnormally distributed. The investigated case showed that the individuals control charts enhance capability of the earned value technique. The authors concluded that implementing the developed tool together with the traditional tools noticeably improves the project controlling scheme and provides more information on project progress. The study extends a previous study in which only independent data were investigated.