FEATURED PAPER

Similarity of Projects: Methodology and Analysis with TRANSCALE Tool

By Pavel Barseghyan, PhD

Armenia & USA

Abstract

Statistical methods in similarity analysis of projects and project management best practices methodology like other statistical methods of project management are far from meeting the requirements of the industry.

In addition, comparison of projects, and in general, project management best practices methodology without taking into account the goals and objectives of projects can lead to erroneous results and undesirable consequences.

Therefore, there is a need for a paradigm shift in this area, which will make it possible to use the new mathematical theory of projects for similarity analysis of projects and in the area of project management best practices.

This article discusses a new methodology of project comparison and project similarity analysis with the aid of project scaling and transformation TRANSCALE tool.

Key words: Similarity of projects, static similarity of projects, dynamic similarity of projects, comparison of projects, project goals and their similarity, project data mining, critique of project similarity statistical methods, generalized theory of projects, analytical relationships between project parameters, TRANSCALE tool for project grouping and similarity analysis.

Introduction

At all phases of project works including planning, execution and postmortem analysis, it is necessary to solve two basic problems. These are the comparison of projects and analysis of their similarity.

The need to compare projects arises in many practical situations related to quality assessments of projects during their planning and execution.

In turn, assessment of the quality of projects implies that in this process the goals and objectives of projects should play a central role.

Depending on what the project goals and their priorities are the very meaning of the concepts of "good project" and "bad project” can be changed…

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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.