Analyzing linear recursive projects as an absorbing chain (Q2491526)

The paper studies recursive projects in which some activities may be revisited after a later activity is completed. It describes the project by means of an absorbing Markov chain. Standard results in this field lead to the determination of expected total duration the project spends in an activity, the expected value the project spends in all activities, and the variance of project duration. Two examples are given, the first one can be calculated numerically, the second one analytically.