A Systematic Review of Earned Value Management Methods for Monitoring and Control of Project Schedule Performance: An AHP Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article has acceptable English and an interesting topic.

However, the reviewer has suggestions as follows. 

1. The title is too long.  Can you make it more concise and effective?

2. The organization of the paper needs to be revised.  For example, section 2 consists of many subsections.  Therefore, it needs to be reorganized while Section 3 is missing. 

3. The content in Section 2 seems to be a literature review, not a methodology. 

4. The equation format needs to be checked.  It also requires an equation number.

5. The font in all figures must be consistent and needs to be checked. 

6. You need to explain every Figure and Table that you show.  Not just only refer to it, for example, Figure 1, Table 1.  

7. Make sure that all abbreviations are defined in the paper even though it is generic terms in your domain, for example, PERT/CPM.  Once it is defined, don’t define it repeatedly,  for example, (EV).

8. Section 2.9 is very short, while section 2.8 is very long. 

9. No need to review AHP in this way.  Just a summary with citations in only one paragraph is enough. 

10. AHP analysis needs subjects (experts) to give their opinion or score.  The paper must show a summary of the expert's background knowledge and experience related to this work.  Some declaration of ethics claims needs to be indicated in this paper.

11. For AHP analysis is no needs to show every step.  Just showing the weight of each layer is enough.  However, if you want to show details of this analysis, you can put it in a supplementary or an appendix.  Then, it has a better presentation.

12. The authors mentioned the new term “CCPM” in the discussion.  What is the purpose?   We found this term again in conclusion. 

13. Conclusion does not summarize the success or findings of this work. 

14. The reference style needs to be checked. 

Please see the attachment for additional comments.  

Best Regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

- The title of the paper is too long and need to be re-written. A suggestion is 

"A Systematic Review of Earned Value Management Methods for Monitoring and Control of Project Schedule Performance: An AHP Approach".

- The Abstract Section lacks the motivation of the study. There is a need to mention the addressed issues, challenges and difficulties of undertaking current projects. 

- There is a need to distinguish among the concepts (Baseline project plan Bpp, project scope statement PSS, WBS).

- Re-write the keywords to reflect the actual content of your work (e.g, remove p-factor, earned value of work in progress, critical path. but add more appropriate words such as baseline performance management, project scope, project baseline schedule, project monitoring and control)

- In line#37: The authors claim that Critical path Wining Scheduling behaves adequately. You have to elaborate and justify this claim. 

- In line#67, #72: write and explain the indicators SV, SPI , P factor in full words. State to what they indicate.

- explain the defects of original EVM in terms of time, cost and scope.

- The study has concentrated and studied managing waterfall projects, but what about the agile projects that are dominant in today's business.

- Write PERT, CPM in full words.

- Line 110: scope (WBS). Do they the same concepts? you need to distinguish among them.

- A need for sources to all figures in the paper.

- Fig-1: explain the indicators CV, SV, ES, FC, PTPT, VAC...etc. 

- Fig-2: explain the indicators EDT

- Fig-3 explain the indicators SPic. Moreover you need to justify and elaborate on the negative values of SV, What do they mean? Also the meaning of values in SP(s), and the highlighted values. 

- Line#250: You said the result is skewed. So how did you improve this for project schedule.

- State the Source of Table-1.

- In Section 2.9: Justify the integration among critical path earned value and work-in-progress management.

- Wrong citation of references [8-12] [13-17].

- Authors should make a table comparing among original EVM and the Five Variations including the defects and how are the solved by other methods.

- Fig-4 & Fig-5: having the same title. 

-Fig-5: ambiguity among the Dots or bullets so readers can't distinguish among SPI Earned value and SPi Earned Programming. You have to change the symbols.

- For table in Fig-5, Authors need to provide the data or provide link to them and explain how the calculations were done.

- Justify the contribution of ESRC approach.

- How PVES is computed.

- Section 2.14 should be replaced with 3.

- Wrong citation [19-24] 

- Fig-8 contains wrong phrases in Alternatives.

- A need to explain all results in Table-3. What about other cells with "yes" such as M-05 and others.

- line 450. based on what you have assigned value of 7.

- what does normalized value, landa, CI, RCI, RIC refer to?

- A need to thorough explanation of results in Tables 4, 5,6, 7,8,9,10,11

- in Discussion Section, Anned to elaborate on the results of other methods 25.3, 14.2, 11.2, 9.5, 7.6  not only the highest one 32.3 and justify each result.

- the Conclusion Section is very general and not based on the results of the study. How did you come with CCPM. Justify.

- The majority of references are old (1970s, 1980s, 1990s) and they are based on news. I didn't see rigor journals from MDPI or other publishers. Also some references are written without journal name, vol. issue, pages. 

- Wrong use of ... in references.

- There is a need to include new references. 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Dear Author

We checked that all comments almost fix. However, a lot of mistake appear after correction. So it needs time to polish this work before resubmitting. For example, missing “.” at the end of each sentence. For example, line 87, 248, 311, 362, 478, and 484. Also, citation placed after a period, for example line 311.

Please see the attached file.

Best Regards

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have went through the sent comments and found that the authors have adequately responded to them. I just found one of the references #27 written in Chinese language.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for improvement. No more comments.