A new project controlling approach based on earned value management and group decision-making process with triangular intuitionistic fuzzy sets

Earned value management (EVM) is a well-known tool in the project control phase. Upon running the projects, it is critical to control the project to determine the amount of deviation from the plan. Most employers expect the project to be completed according to their requirements and at the expected cost and time. In traditional earned value management, the employer does not present his/her plan, but in the proposed approach the employer gives his/her plan and asks the project manager to offer their time, cost, and quality plan of project based on this plan. The proposed method, called earned incentive metric (EIM), is an extension of the EVM approach that is introduced with triangular intuitionistic fuzzy sets. The plan of project team is compared to the employer’s plan, and the project results are finally compared to the employer's plan. The difference between the two comparisons indicates project performance. In the conventional approaches of EVM, the project is controlled in terms of time and cost, but in the presented approach, the quality criterion is controlled along with time and cost criteria. For the quality values of each activity in each work period, a new group decision-making process is provided. Finally, an application example is given, in which the cost, quality, and progress percentages of each activity in each period are regarded as triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers and accordingly performance of time, cost, and project quality are calculated.