Back to uncertainty

Following on from the post about Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb I thought I would outline an interesting section to do with project success and failure.

Taleb outlines the life expectancy profiles from life insurance tables.

A newborn female in the developed world is expected to live to around 79.
When she reaches 79 her life expectancy is another 10 years
At 90, she should live another 4.7 years
At 100 she has about 2.5 years
At 119, about 9 months.

He outlines that life expectancy is subject to mild randomness. It is not scalable since the older we get the less likely we are to live.

For projects though he states the opposite is the case. Projects are a scalable

If a project is expected to end in 79 days, on the 79th day if it has not ended it will another 25 days to complete.

If on the 90th day of the project, it has not completed it will have about 58 days to go.

On the 100th day it will have another 89 days to go.

On the 119th it will have another 149 days to go.

On the 600th day of the project it will need an extra 1590 days.

It would be interesting to measure Government IT projects in this way. At what point does one pull the plug?