BUSI 313 Week 4 Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies: Responding to Classmates on Estimates and Schedules

BUSI 313 Foundations of Project Management, Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The classmates and their threads are composites; the research and Scripture cited are real.

Reply to Kevin

Kevin, you argued that three-point estimates, using optimistic, most likely and pessimistic durations, solve the problem of overly optimistic schedules. They help, because they force the team to think about what could go wrong. But all three numbers still come from looking at the current project from the inside.

Kahneman and Lovallo (1993) called this the inside view: planners picture the steps of their own project and forget how comparable efforts actually went. Their remedy is the outside view: start from the record of comparable past projects. Flyvbjerg (2006) turned that idea into reference class forecasting, in which a forecast is anchored on the distribution of outcomes for a class of similar projects and then adjusted for the case at hand. Applied to your office move example, the question becomes not how long each task should take, but how long similar moves have taken. If your organization's last three moves each ran three or four weeks past plan, a new estimate that assumes no delay deserves suspicion, however carefully its pessimistic durations were chosen. The outside view does not replace the detailed estimate; it checks it.

Scripture commends this kind of humility. Proverbs ties successful plans to the counsel of many advisers (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 15:22). Past projects are some of the wisest advisers a project manager can consult.

Could you find records of two or three past moves in your organization to check your pessimistic estimate?

Reply to Amara

Amara, your thread called the critical path method the backbone of scheduling, and I agree it is the clearest way to see which activities control the finish date. Pinto and Slevin (1987) found that a detailed schedule and plan was among the factors most closely tied to project success, so the effort you described pays off.

Research also shows the limits of a single deterministic schedule. Herroelen and Leus (2005) reviewed scheduling under uncertainty and noted that real projects face disruptions such as late deliveries and changing durations that a fixed schedule does not anticipate. They describe approaches that protect a schedule, such as buffers and proactive scheduling, and the need to reschedule when disruptions occur. In practice, the critical path can shift during execution, so a schedule must be updated, not just drawn once. An activity with a week of slack can become critical after a single late delivery, which is exactly what happened in my own project plan when renovation fell behind. Teams that review the network weekly catch these shifts before they become missed milestones.

James warns believers not to boast about what they will do tomorrow but to say that if the Lord wills, they will do this or that (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, James 4:13-15). That is not a call to stop planning but to hold plans humbly and revise them.

How often do you think a project like yours should update its critical path? Weekly reviews seem right for an eight-week office move, but a multiyear construction job might need a different rhythm.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). From Nobel Prize to project management: Getting risks right. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 5-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697280603700302

Herroelen, W., & Leus, R. (2005). Project scheduling under uncertainty: Survey and research potentials. European Journal of Operational Research, 165(2), 289-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2004.04.002

Kahneman, D., & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk taking. Management Science, 39(1), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.1.17

Pinto, J. K., & Slevin, D. P. (1987). Critical factors in successful project implementation. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, EM-34(1), 22-27. https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.1987.6498856