Sharif Digital Repository

The advent of agile methodologies, though contributing much to software development processes, had a more profound impact on project management processes. Through supporting adaptability in their process frameworks, agile methodologies deviated from conventional project management approaches. This novel attitude has resulted in the emergence of an agile framework for project management. The Agile Project Management Framework (APMF) consists of fine-grained project management practices applied in agile methodologies, and is fast emerging as an alternative to the conventional project management framework. However, there are deficiencies in both frameworks that prevent developers from enhancing... 

Cost and time overruns have been a common characteristic of development projects in many countries. This paper presents a theory of cost and time overruns based on project cost structure. The cost of a development project consists of base cost and progress cost. Base cost keeps a project ready for physical progress. Progress cost creates real physical progress on the project. This cost structure has an important inherent dynamic characteristic with implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of project management. An imbalance between annual budget and ongoing projects results in an increasing inefficiency and ineffectiveness unrelated to the quality of management of individual... 

In today competitive world, productivity or lack of it is a major challenge facing the construction industry. The term "productivity" is defined as the amount of output per unit of input. In order to boost productivity in the construction industry, influencing factors should be recognized and improved. Researchers have identified a myriad of factors affecting construction productivity that can be broadly classified as "external" and "internal" factors. In this paper it has been tried to identify and categorize different factors influencing construction productivity. As a result the intended audience is practitioners in the construction industry and project managers who are eager to improve... 

Every project is temporary and unique in nature. However, knowledge and lessons learned in projects may be used in other projects to improve the project management services. A learned lesson comes from past and current projects, captured through well-defined organizational processes. It aims to capture an essence of an experience which may be utilized to modify the project processes, or the situations for which that lesson applies. Although lessons learned is used in many industries and is an essential part of Project Management Body of Knowledge, no effective process has been defined to capture, validate, and reuse projects' lessons learned. A three stage system was developed and used to... 

Workers' absence considerably a ects the performance of labor-intensive construction projects. Identifying such absence patterns assists construction project managers in preparing proper project organization, reducing the absence rate, and improving the project performance. Despite its critical role, no study has investigated the absence pattern in the construction industry in Iran. This study addresses this gap by identifying the worker's absence pattern and providing recommendations to reduce the absence rate. First, a comprehensive literature review is conducted on the impacts of in uential factors in the worker's absence. Then, a questionnaire-based survey is designed and distributed... 

Change occurrence during project's life cycle and its impact on project's success is common concern of all parties in projects. Hence, predicting and managing them to mitigate their negative outcomes is critical. This study offers categorization of changes types, causes and effects arise in Iranian projects and investigates the most prevalent ones through conducting a survey. Findings demonstrate that schedule, information and time are the most frequent type, cause and impact of changes, respectively  

Nowadays "as everywhere in the world", so much attention is drawn to performing safety and HSE management rules in Iran. Considering the long life of oil and it's relevant industries in Iran (since 1908, first oil well in Middle East, Masjid Soleyman), many units with more than 50 years old are still in operation. This situation posed special problems in performing safety and HSE regulations that some of them are communal among these units. This paper reveals the result of industrial projects, collecting numerous technical checklists in such units and author's experiences in recent years in Iran, which is aimed to announce some of these major problems and also present solutions for them  

Numerous projects are underway in emerging countries, such as Iran, where technology transfer and economic expansion are the primary national objectives. However, majority of these projects either fall, according to world class standards, or faced with significant time delays. An Initial analysis of selected projects reveals that over 60% of causes belong to organization factors, while environment and personal causes are less than 40%. The overwhelming evidence points of lack of proper project management and education within organization factors. Some prescriptive interventions are proposed to counter organization deficiencies and overcome consistent time delays. A planning stage using... 

Agile Software Development is regarded as an effective and efficient approach, mainly due to its ability to accommodate rapidly changing requirements, and to cope with modern software development challenges. There is therefore a strong tendency to use agile software development methodologies where applicable; however, the sheer number of existing agile methodologies and their variants hinders the selection of an appropriate agile methodology or method chunk. Methodology evaluation tools address this problem through providing detailed evaluations, yet no comprehensive evaluation framework is available for agile methodologies. We introduce the Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Agile... 

Inefficient project planning and control have been identified as the main contributor to the reduced performance of the construction industry in Iran. Meanwhile, improper use of planning and control software packages (PPCSPs) in these projects can be a key factor in this reduced performance. This study investigates different aspects of the PPCSP applications to draw the role of PPCSPs in the planning and control processes of construction projects in the country using a survey-based method. It is found that only 32.5% of the construction companies in Iran highly or very highly use PPCSPs. The low level of skill and the lack of management support are two main contributing factors to this...