The virtual design team

Reviewer: Ana M. Moreno

The goal of this research was to apply the computational simulation models used in other branches of engineering to project planning. The authors propose a model, called the Virtual Design Team (VDT), that represents the structure and capabilities of organizational entities, such as teams (called actors in the model), activities, and both direct and coordination work. The model links the organization chart and the activity diagram of projects, and can be used to predict the effect of different organizational structures or of the use of different project constraints. In this respect, the proposed method outperforms planning tools based on the Critical Path Method, as it explicitly incorporates the necessary communication and coordination among the actors assigned to different project activities. The paper includes no technical content, but rather centers on describing the main behavioral features of the proposed model in familiar language. This approach, although beneficial for disseminating the content of the paper, fails to give readers familiar with the subject a deeper understanding. The paper concludes with a section in which the authors affirm the strengths of their model. However, this section is based on qualitative assessments performed on the model, and fails to present data on the basis of which readers can reach this conclusi on. The selection of references is good, but not very extensive. The paper can be considered a good starting point from which to go into further detail about the subject.