Every project starts with a rough estimate, and these are usually referred to as preliminary. As the project progresses, the actual task performance may be different from the initial estimate. This difference is called variance. On page 16 of PMI’s Practice Standard for Project Estimating the authors write, “Even though estimates are developed initially at…

Complex projects go bad weekly. During the first week of January 2011, these stories made headlines: A light rail project near Detroit is held up by project delays caused by federal environmental requirements; Indonesia’s state banks fail to meet infrastructure loan projects because of project delays due to land acquisition challenges; a regional board of…