Time Predictions: Understanding and Avoiding Unrealism in Project Planning and Everyday Life

Description

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Predicting the time needed to complete a project, task or daily activity can be difficult and people frequently underestimate how long an activity will take. This book sheds light on why and when this happens, what we should do to avoid it and how to give more realistic time predictions. It describes methods for predicting time usage in situations with high uncertainty, explains why two plus two is usually more than four in time prediction contexts, reports on research on time prediction biases, and summarizes the evidence in support of different time prediction methods and principles. Based on a comprehensive review of the research, it is the first book summarizing what we know about judgment-based time predictions. Large parts of the book are directed toward people wishing to achieve better time predictions in their professional life, such as project managers, graphic designers, architects, engineers, film producers, consultants, software developers, or anyone else in need of realistic time usage predictions. It is also of benefit to those with a general interest in judgment and decision-making or those who want to improve their ability to predict and plan ahead in daily life. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 1-3 How We Predict Time Usage (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 5-11 Predictions and the Uncertainty of the Future (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 13-33 Overoptimistic Predictions (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 35-54 Time Prediction Biases (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 55-70 Uncertainty of Time Predictions (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 71-79 Time Prediction Methods and Principles (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 81-102 Time Predictions: Matching the Method to the Situation (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 103-107 How to Obtain Overoptimistic Time Predictions from Others (Torleif Halkjelsvik, Magne Jørgensen)....Pages 109-110