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Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?

priceonomics.com

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Re: Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?

#2

Post by bikamonki »

Simple: time is a resource, it is a cost. When one bids for a project, time is also taken into account when selecting a vendor. So, just as one tries to offer the best price and experience, the same goes for time. One knows that the project will most likely take longer but if that realistic timeframe is put into the proposal, there is risk in losing the contract. It is a safer bet to later ask for reasonable time extensions than not getting the project at all.

Re: Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?

#3

Post by mikhailfranco »

bikamonki wrote: post #2

Simple: time is a resource, it is a cost. When one bids for a project, time is also taken into account when selecting a vendor. So, just as one tries to offer the best price and experience, the same goes for time. One knows that the project will most likely take longer but if that realistic timeframe is put into the proposal, there is risk in losing the contract. It is a safer bet to later ask for reasonable time ext…

Yes, I call it the 'conspiracy of optimism'. The bidder wants to win the business and implement the project, the customer-user wants the capability provided by the project, so they conspire against the customer-payer.

Realistic proposals fail. An under-resourced under-priced and short-scheduled proposal is functionally approved by the customer-user, then signed-off as the cheapest/shortest option by the customer-payer.

The real negotiation is in the T&Cs for change management, scope creep, responsibilities for delays and the structure of payment according to milestones.

Re: Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?

#6

Post by rwcarlsen »

SixSigma wrote: post #4

Hofstadter's law + Parkinson's Law + Murphy's Law = Delay

Hofstadter's Law is my favorite law of all time:

"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Re: Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?

#9

Post by nhaehnle »

There is actually a nugget of thought in the article beyond the explanations you always hear (and which make up all the comments in this thread as I'm writing this): Even if you base your project schedules on accurate estimates of the median time required for each step, you will still be behind schedule for most projects.

The reason is actually quite simple: when things go well, they can only go so well, but when they go bad, they can go really bad.

Or, in a more quantitative way: while each step of the project will be equally likely to take longer or shorter than median, the steps that take longer can take much longer, while the steps that go faster only have a limited potential for balancing out the delays.

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