Comment by nostrademons

2 days ago

That's what the math is reflecting. Project succeeds if all of 10 people does their job well. Each person has a 95% chance of succeeding. 0.95^10 ~= 60%, and so the chance that all 10 people do their job successfully is ~60%.

Those jobs also include things like management and product design, and so the coordination risk is reflected in the 5% chance that the manager drops the ball on communication. (As a manager, I suspect that chance is significantly more than 5% and that's why overall success rates are even lower.)

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nostrademons

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steveBK123  2 days ago

That's what I mean "only 5%" encapsulating all failure modes (comms/implementation/coordination/etc) is very low.

And that under-estimation compounds to make the top level 60% much higher than it should be.

A 7.5% rate takes top-level success odds below 50% - 46%. A not unrealistic 10% takes the top level down to 35%.

Etc.