So I’m taking a class on Microsoft Project, which will at some point be important to doing my job. But more interesting to me (since Project is just plain dumb) are the things that I’m picking up about Project Management.
The first thing that bothered me is a formula that we are told is a well-tested and proven way to determine how to schedule a task:
E = [O + P + (4 * M)]/6
- E = estimated Duration
- O = the most optimistic time
- P = the most pessimistic time
- M = the most probable time
So how do we use this? First, we decide how long something will probably take. For instance, developing a website of a limited size and scope will take, say, 20 days. That’s M. But it might only take 14 days (O) or as much as 26 days (P). Right? So to find the estimated duration, we plug in our variables:
E = [14 + 26 + (4 * 20)]/6
E = 20
Holy crap! Did you see that? We just MATHEMATICALLY proved that it’ll take 20 days to build a website. How? Well, first we took our hunch (M), then we calculated two guesses (O,P), then we averaged them figuring that our hunch was 4 times as likely as either of our guesses. Bam! 20 days!
So now, my loyal (and quiet) readers, you can use real, time-tested, highly effective project management to back up your hunches. Is that great or what?
Oh, another thing we learned is that American companies lose $70 billion every year because of bad math project management. Isn’t that amazing?
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