Planning deviation

Success Problem

Typical human behaviour connected with the project planning is to underrate the estimates of time, costs and project assumptions, needed for some activity.

Impact

Planning deviation (planning optimistic bias) becomes evident disregarding the planner‘s knowledge about the duration and cost of similar past activities. The people think about how they will realize some activity in the future disregarding the past lessons learned (for example about risks). The planning optimistic bias is related to the perceptual logic. The planning optimistic bias is subject also to external factors: the project planners are also project procurors pressed to money saving solutions contrary to the requirements for the benefits from the resulting product.

Recommendation

The planning optimistic bias risk can be reduced first of all through early and frequent informations exchange between the planners and procurors and by consistent usage of the lessons learned from past projects.

Category

• Schedule & Time