[1] Robust Project Design(tm)

Project modeling as it should be.

Foreword

My sons, you should know Robust Project Design(tm) . Despite my desire to provide for you and to help and guide both of you at every future step, my time is limited. While my health is ok. I can’t expect to be in this world forever. Still, I have learned much during my years in this world, and I love the two of you enough to want to share what I have learned. This book is one of my bridges between now and the future, your future.

Today you are young; the things that I write about are of no interest to either of you at this time. But they will be of interest to you when you strive to succeed in the world of corporations. At that time, you will face the same challenges that stump the managers and executives of today. If you are mindful of the information that I share with you now, you will know how to make yourselves invaluable to those who invest in whatever corporation you choose to serve, and you will find it easy to compete with your peers. You will find it easy to succeed.

One of the challenges that today’s crop of managers find overwhelmingly daunting involves making predictions regarding the near-term future of a business. Such predictions give us the means with which to make decisions that are consistently constructive, rather than being frequently counterproductive. I intend to discuss here the first steps in making such predictions. Specifically, I intend to share with you all that I have learned about planning, designing, tracking, and managing projects.

The knowledge that I share with you will be invaluable during the early portions of your careers, when you’ll find yourselves competing with peers whose actions and decisions will be driven by a number of prevailing misconceptions. This knowledge will give you a powerful edge. I call it Robust Project Design.

Robust Project Design is the practice of creating models (representations) of real projects, models that yield unbiased estimates of project duration, with minimum uncertainty in those estimates. Once available, the resulting models enable us to monitor the health of the corresponding projects and to make steadily improving predictions regarding the duration from the present to future events of interest. Our Robust Project Design models become the basis for real-time management decisions.