Multi-criteria project portfolio selection and scheduling problem based on acceptability analysis

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering Vol. 135; pp. 793 - 799
• Main Authors: Song, Shiling, Yang, Feng, Xia, Qiong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2019
• Subjects: Multi-criteria decision making; Project management; Project portfolio optimization; Resource allocation; Stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA); Project portfolio optimization; Multi-criteria decision making; Stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA); Project management; Resource allocation
• ISSN: 0360-8352; 1879-0550
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2019.06.056

•We propose a SMAA based approach for multi-criteria project portfolio selection.•Scheduling is involved in the project portfolio selection.•A backtracking algorithm is proposed to find all satisfactory portfolios.•Our method simultaneously considers uncertain criteria values and completely unknown preference information. In a typical multi-criteria project portfolio selection and scheduling problem, a decision maker selects the optimal project portfolio and initiates work at the right time within a given planning horizon. Traditional methods cannot perfectly resolve such problem with uncertain criteria values and unknown weights. In this paper, we propose an approach based on stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) to effectively manage the multi-criteria project portfolio selection and scheduling problem. This SMAA-based approach has two main procedures. First, a backtracking algorithm is proposed to find all satisfactory portfolios. Second, the SMAA is conducted to evaluate satisfactory portfolios and help decision makers select the optimal portfolio. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the SMAA-based approach.