TOWARDS BUILDING AN INTELLIGENT DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR PROJECT-MANAGEMENT

Management of large projects, especially the ones in which a major com ponent of R&D is involved and those requiring knowledge from diverse s pecialised and sophisticated fields, may be classified as semi-structu red problems. In these problems, there is some knowledge about the nat ure of the work involved, but there are also uncertainties associated with emerging technologies. In order to draw up a plan and schedule of activities of such a large and complex project, the project manager i s faced with a host of complex decisions that he has to take, such as, when to start an activity, for how long the activity is likely to con tinue, etc. An Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) which aids t he manager in decision making and drawing up a feasible schedule of ac tivities while taking into consideration the constraints of resources and time, will have a considerable impact on the efficient management of the project. This report discusses the design of an IDSS that helps in project planning phase through the scheduling phase. The IDSS uses a new project scheduling tool, the Project Influence Graph (PIG).