Ranking Critical Activities in Complex System Development Projects

This paper proposes a discrete-time Markov chain-based ranking algorithm to rank critical activities in development processes for complex systems. Critical activities are those that lead to greater rework, involve close coordination or interdependence between development units, or produce task volat...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE systems journal 2020-03, Vol.14 (1), p.1353-1364
Main Authors: Srinivasan, Satish M., Kilicay-Ergin, Nil H., Sangwan, Raghvinder S., Neill, Colin J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity ranking
Adaptation models
Algorithms
centrality measures
Complex systems
design structure matrix
discrete-time Markov chain (MC)
Markov chains
Markov processes
Measurement
Modeling
normalized discounted cumulative gain
process architecture
Product development
Ranking
System effectiveness
Systems engineering
Task analysis
Volatility
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper proposes a discrete-time Markov chain-based ranking algorithm to rank critical activities in development processes for complex systems. Critical activities are those that lead to greater rework, involve close coordination or interdependence between development units, or produce task volatility. For example, the product development processes of the Ford Motor Company have several activities that are sensitive to information variability which can lead to higher task volatility or higher probability of rework. It is important to identify such activities early to ensure that the requirements for these activities are met and risk mitigation efforts can be planned. Analysis of the results from a variety of process architectures across a range of systems engineering domains shows that the proposed algorithm is more effective in identifying these critical activities than existing network ranking algorithms.
ISSN:1932-8184
1937-9234
DOI:10.1109/JSYST.2019.2913660