Paradoxes of the Multi-Chain Critical Paths as the Dissipative Structures

Abstract

Parametric and structural uncertainties complicate the project management processes. The critical path is one of the pivotal parameters, which helps to control the project schedule and is used to determine the criticality of the tasks and activities that are the most decisive and should be treated during a project expediting or controlling. There may be a set of the critical paths in uncertain environment. Therefore, the main question is which of the critical paths to select. The aim of this paper is to answer to this question. We used Monte Carlo simulation to investigate the multiple critical paths. We revealed and explained several paradoxes that emerged as results of the multiple critical paths occurrence. They are inevitable late bias of the project duration under uncertainty, the tasks probability and their correlation effects, the impact of concurrent chains of the tasks on their criticality, multiplicity of the critical paths and especially multi-chain critical paths. We demonstrated that multiple critical paths are not negative effect. On the contrary, they play extraordinary useful role and are the reliable criterion of the project robustness and stability.

Keywords

• project scheduling
• simulation
• multiple critical paths
• multi-chain critical path
• parametric uncertainty
• structural uncertainty