Determining the project completion time with fuzzy linear programming in project scheduling problems and application in a software project

In today's highly competitive business environment, project management activities provide a significant advantage with the ability to plan and monitor according to cost, time and performance factors. Delivering projects on time is very important in terms of customer satisfaction. Effective project scheduling method should be used in order to ensure the success of the project schedule. Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) are frequently preferred methods in project scheduling. These methods have many advantages such as not being mathematically complex, being applicable in different sectors, showing the network representation and the project activities and the relationships between them easily, ensuring that the resources are applied to critical activities on the critical path to reduce the project length. However, in real-life applications, these methods may not be able to represent real projects due accurately and fully to problems in estimating these parameters when activity times are uncertain. Fuzzy theory is a fundamental way to eliminate these problems and improve scheduling. The fuzzy theory brings the project scheduling models closer to reality by considering the uncertainties in the parameters, the situations caused by imprecise or incomplete information. In this thesis, a new method based on fuzzy linear programming is proposed to determine the completion times of the project in case of uncertainty in the activity duration of the project. To evaluate the proposed method, an application was carried out in a real software project and the model results were examined.