Inside the Planning Fallacy: The Causes and Consequences of Optimistic Time Predictions

Buehler, Roger; Griffin, Dale W.; Ross, Michael

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511808098.016

Cited by 119 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 1,299 publications

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“…These observations are consistent with the planning fallacy (Buehler et al, 2002;Pezzo et al, 2006). The time (cost, risk) underestimation (and overestimation of benefits) of an involved actor has been observed in a variety of everyday tasks and projects such as school work, furniture assembly, and computer programming which also contributes to the ad-hoc approach to management as described by P7:…”

Section: Duration End and Afterlifesupporting

confidence: 72%

An empirical study of long-term personal project information management

Pucihar

Kljun

Mariani

et al. 2016

Aslib Journal of Information Management

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Purpose: Personal projects are any kind of projects whose management is left to an individual untrained in project management and is greatly influenced by this individual's personal touch. This includes the majority of knowledge workers who daily manage information relating to several personal projects. We have conducted an in-depth qualitative investigation on information management of such projects and the tacit knowledge behind its processes that cannot be found in the organisational structures of current Personal Information Management (PIM) tools (file managers, email clients, web browsers). The aim is to reveal and understand project information management practices in details and provide guidelines for personal project management tools.Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews similar to that in several other PIM exploratory studies were carried out focusing on project fragmentation, information overlap and project context recreation. In addition, we enhanced interviews with sketching approach not yet used to study PIM. Sketches ware used for articulating things that were not easily expressed through words, they represented a time stamp of a project context in the projects' lifetime, uncovered additional tacit knowledge behind project information management not mentioned during the interviews, and were also used to find what they have in common which might be used in prototype designing. Findings:The paper presents first personal project definition based on the conceptualisations derived from the study. The study revealed that the extensive information fragmentation in the file hierarchy (due to different organisational needs and ease of information access) poses a significant challenge to context recreation besides cross-tool fragmentation so far described in the literature. The study also reveals the division of project information into core and support and emphasises the importance of support information in relation to project goals. Other findings uncover the division of input/output information, project overlaps through information reuse, storytelling and visualising information relations, which could help with user modeling and enhancing project context recreation. Research limitations/implications:One of the limitations is the group of participants that cannot represent the ideally generalised knowledge worker as there are many different kinds of knowledge workers and they all have different information needs besides different management practices. However, participants of variety of different backgrounds were observed and we converged observations into points of project information management similarities across the spectrum of different professions. Nevertheless, its observations and conceptualisations should be repeatable. For one, some of the issues that emerged during this work have been to different extents discussed in other studies. Practical implications:The empirical findings are used to create guidelines for designing personal project information management tools:-s...

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Section: Duration End and Afterlifesupporting

confidence: 72%

An empirical study of long-term personal project information management

Pucihar

Kljun

Mariani

et al. 2016

Aslib Journal of Information Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Research shows people routinely ignore or underestimate time delays (Sterman 1989 ;Sterman 2000 ;Buehler et al 2002 ;Faro et al 2010 ) . Underestimating time delays leads people to believe, wrongly, that it is prudent to "wait and see" whether a potential environmental risk will actually begin to cause harm, or until scienti fi c research resolves uncertainty about whether something is harmful, then address it if it does.…”

Section: Time Delaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustaining Sustainability: Creating a Systems Science in a Fragmented Academy and Polarized World

Sterman¹

2012

Sustainability Science

153

174

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From climate change, deforestation, and depletion of fossil fuels to overexploited fi sheries, species extinction, and poisons in our food and water, our society is unsustainable and it is getting worse fast. Many advocate that overcoming these problems requires the development of systems thinking. We have long been told that the unsustainability of our society arises because we treat the world as unlimited and problems unconnected when we live on a fi nite "spaceship Earth" in which "there is no away" and "everything is connected to everything else." The challenge lies in moving from slogans to speci fi c tools and processes that help us understand complexity, design better policies, facilitate individual and organizational learning, and catalyze the technical, economic, social, political, and personal changes we need to create a sustainable society. Here I outline a design for a systems science of sustainability that rises to this challenge. Where the dynamics of complex systems are conditioned by multiple feedbacks, time delays, accumulations, and nonlinearities, our mental models generally ignore these elements of dynamic complexity; where the consequences of our actions spill out across time and space and across disciplinary boundaries, our universities, corporations, and governments are organized in silos that focus on the short term and fragment knowledge. I describe how sustainability research, teaching, and engagement with the policy process can be organized to provide scienti fi cally grounded, reliable knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries, that engages multiple stakeholders, that grapples with unavoidable issues of ethics, values, and purpose, and that leads to action.

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“…People routinely ignore or underestimate time delays (Sterman 1989(Sterman , 2000Buehler et al 2002). Underestimating time delays leads people to believe, wrongly, that it is prudent to "wait and see" whether a potential environmental risk will actually cause harm.…”

Section: Time Delaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating climate change risks in a skeptical world

Sterman¹

2011

Climatic Change

185

151

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been extraordinarily successful in the task of knowledge synthesis and risk assessment. However, the strong scientific consensus on the detection, attribution, and risks of climate change stands in stark contrast to widespread confusion, complacency and denial among policymakers and the public. Risk communication is now a major bottleneck preventing science from playing an appropriate role in climate policy. Here I argue that the ability of the IPCC to fulfill its mission can be enhanced through better understanding of the mental models of the audiences it seeks to reach, then altering the presentation and communication of results accordingly. Few policymakers are trained in science, and public understanding of basic facts about climate change is poor. But the problem is deeper. Our mental models lead to persistent errors and biases in complex dynamic systems like the climate and economy. Where the consequences of our actions spill out across space and time, our mental models have narrow boundaries and focus on the short term. Where the dynamics of complex systems are conditioned by multiple feedbacks, time delays, accumulations and nonlinearities, we have difficulty recognizing and understanding feedback processes, underestimate time delays, and do not understand basic principles of accumulation or how nonlinearities can create regime shifts. These problems arise not only among laypeople but also among highly educated elites with significant training in science. They arise not only in complex systems like the climate but also in familiar contexts such as filling a bathtub. Therefore they cannot be remedied merely by providing more information about the climate, but require different modes of communication, including experiential learning environments such as interactive simulations.

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Inside the Planning Fallacy: The Causes and Consequences of Optimistic Time Predictions

Cited by 119 publications

References 1,299 publications

An empirical study of long-term personal project information management

An empirical study of long-term personal project information management

Sustaining Sustainability: Creating a Systems Science in a Fragmented Academy and Polarized World

Communicating climate change risks in a skeptical world

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