Michael Krigsman provided an interesting variation of why blind dates so often fail and changed blind dates to project plans.

The interesting piece to me is the overlap area identified as “rare”. I speak to many folks about their project expectations compared to plans and one phrase which comes up often is “well, it worked in [name of] project fairly close to plan”. The somewhat rare success in planning up front seems to be a beacon for further use of particular project planning tactics.

I am not going to expand right now on this subject but I would like to leave this with something for us to ponder. How many of your projects actually get even close to original plan expectations? What methods in planning are actually adding to the success? What types of projects are finding better success? Let me know if you have any comments or wish to share your answers with the readers of this blog.