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Charles Vermette, responding to my note about project failures and a lack of
planning, wondered: <<Anyone else note that if you add 75 percent and 28
percent you get something close to 100 percent? Maybe, just maybe, then
ones that succeeded were the ones that planned...>>
Yup. Correlation does not imply causality, but there's certainly a plausible
mechanism that connects a lack of planning with a lack of success. On the
other hand:
<<In any event, I'd *love* to see the success rates of the teams that
planned versus the ones that didn't...>>
It would indeed be interesting, but it's worth keeping Steinbeck's recasting
of Burns*: "The best laid plans of mice and men often** go astray." Even the
best plans can't always keep up with recalcitrant realities.
* Robert Burns, _Ode to a Mouse_: "The best-laid plans o' mice an' men /
Gang aft a-gley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain / For promised
joy." (Getting ready for Scotland... T-9 days!)
** Various versions of both quotes abound on the Web, and I don't have
either book handy, so assume that the actual words may differ.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
Hofstadter's Law--"The time and effort required to complete a project are
always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's
Law."
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