A janela da desgraça

Acerca da duração dos projectos - THE WINDOW OF DOOM.

"Most big projects are not merely at risk of not delivering as promised. Nor are they only at risk of going seriously wrong. They are at risk of going disastrously wrong because their risk is fat-tailed. Against that background, it is interesting to note that the project management literature almost completely ignores systematic study of the fat-tailedness of project risk.

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smaller projects are susceptible to fat tails, too.

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major corporations on the hook for runaway projects may be able to keep things going by borrowing more and more money. Governments can also pile up debt. Or raise taxes. But most ordinary folks and small businesses cannot draw on a big stockpile of wealth, run up debt, or raise taxes. If they start a project that hurtles toward the fat tail of the distribution, they will simply be wiped out, giving them even more reason than a corporate executive or government official to take the danger seriously. And that starts by understanding what causes project failure.

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Projects that fail tend to drag on, while those that succeed zip along and finish. Why is that? Think of the duration of a project as an open window. The longer the duration, the more open the window. The more open the window, the more opportunity for something to crash through and cause trouble, including a big, bad black swan.

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From the dramatic to the mundane to the trivial, change can rattle or ruin a project—if it occurs during the window of time when the project is ongoing.  Solution? Close the window. Of course, a project can’t be completed instantly, so we can’t close the window entirely. But we can make the opening radically smaller by speeding up the project and bringing it to a conclusion faster. That is a main means of reducing risk on any project.

In sum, keep it short!"

Como reduzir a janela de oportunidade para a desgraça? 

Resposta rápida, simples, mas errada: Começar já, começar depressa. 

Continua. 

Trechos retirados de "How Big Things Get Done" de Bent Flyvbjerg