Construction and evaluation framework for a real-life project database

•Construction of a large and diverse real-life project database, publicly available•Development of a database construction and evaluation framework (project cards)•Project cards guarantee data quality and can serve didactical purposes as well.•Database evaluation leads to initial results and propositions for future research.

In this paper, a real-life project database is created, outranking the existing empirical databases from project management literature in both size and diversity. To ensure the quality of the added project data, a database construction and evaluation framework based on the so-called project cards is developed. These project cards incorporate the concepts of dynamic scheduling and introduce two novel evaluation measures for the authenticity of project data. Furthermore, an overview of the constructed database leads to statements on the difference between planned and actual project performance and on the earned value management (EVM) forecasting accuracy. Moreover, the database is publicly available and can thus become the basis for many future studies related to project management, of which a few are suggested in this paper. To further support these studies, the database will continuously be extended utilizing the project cards. Furthermore, the project cards can also serve didactical purposes.