Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the famous author of “Black Swan”, makes a strong point in his book about the fallibility of planning when it comes to projects in a complex world. He shows how the probability of the duration of a complex project is nothing but a long tail curve with astonishing practical consequences for the project leader: the more your project is late, the more late you can expect it to be beyond what you think!

Out latest White Paper 2013-08 explains the mathematical background of a surprising truth:

If your project is forecast to be late, it will be finally around twice as late as you expect today!

 

Indeed, for complex projects, our “intuition” that if we are late, things should sort themselves out and converge is wrong. It will get worse!

You might not believe it. Try it, it works – and it is supported by actual mathematical theories on complex systems.

In complex systems, intuition is not necessarily a good counsel and it is better to expect the worst when a project starts deviating significantly from its expected duration or cost. Cutting losses by stopping before it is too late – or alternatively benefiting from a great contract protection – might be the only way to save your company in these cases.

Read our ground breaking new White Paper 2013-08 ‘Black Swan Schedule Management: Is Your Project Going to Be Late? Well, it Will Be Even Later than you Forecast!’