There's a saying that only prophets or fools try to predict the future but
companies around the world are forced to do just that when they need to decide
which products to develop often investing a lot of resources in projects
that ultimately fail
The trouble is most of these failures are evident only after massive
investment in new product development with the considerable blow to the
company's reputation on top of the loss of money and resources So companies need
a new the way of planning ahead and a better method to support decision making
Such a method would include two main components: one better decision support
tools and two training tools for project teams so they learn how to work together,
develop a shared understanding of the project, use the decision support tools
and consequently improve their decision-making and planning processes
Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology led by Professor
Avy Shtub have recently developed a simulation system that helps project
managers and project teams improve their decisions at early stages of projects
Known as the fuzzy front end this system allows teams to generate project
scenarios in a dry run environment simulating all the stages of project
development under the constraints and limitations of the actual project based
on the input simulator offers a forecast of the project cost, schedule and product
quality mmm
Lately this simulation system was used for front-end planning in an experiment
covering nine projects with a total worth of 200 million dollars six of
these projects were tested in Israel's National R&D Defense Laboratory where
after a year it was found that on average the actual cost and schedule
performances improved by 5% to 7% compared to average performances
In the future the simulator will estimate not only the duration and cost
of projects but also the probabilities of cost overrun and schedule delays of
alternatives considered for the project thus helping companies make better and
more informed decisions