Stochastic Earned Duration Analysis for Project Schedule Management

Earned duration management (EDM) is a methodology for project schedule management (PSM) that can be considered an alternative to earned value management (EVM). EDM provides an estimation of deviations in schedule and a final project duration estimation. There is a key difference between EDM and EVM: In EDM, the value of activities is expressed as work periods; whereas in EVM, value is expressed in terms of cost. In this paper, we present how EDM can be applied to monitor and control stochastic projects. To explain the methodology, we use a real case study with a project that presents a high level of uncertainty and activities with random durations. We analyze the usability of this approach according to the activities network topology and compare the EVM and earned schedule methodology (ESM) for PSM.