Abstract
One of the critical elements in project planning is the careful creation of the schedule, identifying all key activities, estimating time to completion, and laying out the activity network. As part of this process, human behaviors can play an important and often unhelpful role in distorting project plans. In this chapter, we examine one of the key behavioral challenges in project planning, the identification of activity durations and project team members' development of extra slack in the schedule. We argue that adding slack (extra time) to our activity duration estimates is a common behavior and occurs for a variety of reasons, most commonly due to the desire to protect ourselves from aggressive or unreasonable project schedules. Our desire to avoid looking bad motivates us to add a safety margin to our activity duration estimates. This chapter identifies some of the most common ways in which extra slack is inserted into individual's duration estimates and considers the implications of extra slack on creating accurate and reasonable project activity networks.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Mastering Project Leadership |
Subtitle of host publication | Insights from the Research |
Publisher | CRC Press |
Pages | 93-98 |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781040105146 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781032473321 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2024 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
- General Business, Management and Accounting
- General Engineering
- General Environmental Science