Hi Azar,

Monte Carlo simulation may be useful for strategic decisions but is rarely used for many reasons that include:

1) It is time consuming and requires a lot of input data,

2) Existing Monte Carlo simulation tools are not perfect,

3) The quality of input information is always low.

So the results of Monte Carlo simulation using current tools and approaches shall be considered as very rough estimates.

But estimating necessary contingency reserves and realistic time and cost is necessary and Monte Carlo is one of potential approaches to reciving these estimates.

We use different approach that is not that time consuming and can be done fast. This approach is a part of Success Driven Project Management methodology. Many publications on SDPM may be found at http://www.spiderproject.ru/publ_e.php#eng

SDPM is used not only for strategic decisions nut also for regular project management.

I am sure that strategic decisions shall always be based on risk analysis. So some tools for risk simulation and obtaining realistic estimates shall be used.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Hi Azar,

project management software is a decision support tool. It supplies decision makers with the analysis of the future consequences of their decisions, answers "what if" questions, and helps to prove that some decisions are better that the others.

We always use resource leveling because manual leveling in large complex projects produces poor results or is just impossible. So it is reasonable to use computer power to get best results and not just some results.

But finding optimal resource constrained schedule is hard mathematical problem and most PM software packages (like MSP, P3. P6) produce poor resource leveling results. I think that Mike just never used proper PM software and thus decided to do this very hard job manually.

I am sure that any PM software supports links to/from external databases. But remember that any scheduling shall be made only if all project acttivities have the same data date. So the process of decision making shall be disreete - at some moment the schedule shall be updated using the data imported from the databases and all actual information. If the schedule is not synchronized - the actual data on different activities and the database data have different dates then no decision shall be made.

Best Regards,

Vladimir